The descriptions which du Maurier has used are incredibly vivid. She touches upon so many emotions too, and demonstrates the power of compassion, guilt, desperation and adoration. Her building of atmosphere and foreboding is nothing short of masterful. Whilst some plots and characters are far more interesting than others, du Maurier’s writing is strong throughout the collection. Never is anything rushed, nor any space allowed to be wasted. When using a more controlled and word-restricted framework within her writing, du Maurier is very thorough.

‘La Sainte-Vierge’ tells of the life of a young woman living in a typical Breton village, and the trials which she faces in her life and ‘The Lover’ demonstrates a fractured and mistrustful relationship. In the title story, ‘The Rendezvous’, we learn about a novelist and article writer, and the ways in which his career has progressed, both for better and for worse. In the first story, ‘No Motive’, for example, the suicide of a perfectly content woman is investigated and in ‘Fairy Tale’, an interesting spin on the rags-to-riches story, a destitute couple imagine themselves in an elevated position, away from their constant money troubles and impending homelessness.

The strongest tales in the collection are largely set within the period in which she was writing.ĭu Maurier has also made use of an array of plots, all of which serve to keep the reader interested.

She has also chosen to use a variety of different eras in which to set her stories. As with all of du Maurier’s short story collections, a diverse range of settings have been used, from Switzerland and Paris to a tiny Yorkshire village. The Rendezvous and Other Stories is made up of fifteen stories in all. Several of these tales were previously featured in magazines before being placed into the collection, which was published in 1980. Unlike many of her collections, which cover just a few years, the stories here span du Maurier’s entire career.

I have greatly enjoyed du Maurier’s short stories in the past, and consequently had rather high hopes for The Rendezvous and Other Stories. I decided to read these stories quite early on in my preparation for du Maurier December, purely because I really felt like digging into them.

The rendezvous and other stories