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This was my first audiobook. It was 15 hours long, so it took me a while, but it was worth it. I was familiar with the plot, having seen two movie versions (including the classic 1940 one with Laurence Olivier, George Sanders, Judith Anderson, and Joan Fontaine). However, I did not expect such beautiful prose:

"I wanted to go on sitting there, not talking, not listening to the others, keeping the moment precious for all time, because we were peaceful all of us, we were content and drowsy even as the bee who droned above our heads. In a little while it would be different, there would come tomorrow, and the next day and another year. And we would be changed perhaps, never sitting qite like this again. Some of us would go away, or suffer, or die, the future stretched away in front of us, unknown, unseen, not perhaps what we wanted, not what we planned. This moment was safe though, this could not be touched.�

The unnamed narrator is a young English girl working as a companion to a beastly American woman (Mrs Van Hopper) when she meets the elegant, sophisticated, and mysterious Maxim de Winter. He befriends her and then, much to her amazement, proposes marriage. When the new Mrs de Winter arrives at Manderley, she finds that the shadow of Maxim's first wife, Rebecca, hangs over everything. Of course, a lot of this is due to the young woman's inferiority complex - she is constantly comparing herself to Rebecca and feels she comes up short every time. She actually becomes obsessed with Rebecca - and she is not the only one. The sinister Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper, adored Rebecca and hates the new Mrs de Winter, whom she tries to destroy.

Anna Massey does an excellent job of narrating this audiobook. The only voices that I felt did not work were Giles, Beatrice's husband (Maxim's brother-in-law), and Jack Fauvel, who really got on my nerves. However, she did a superb job with the narrator, Mrs Van Hopper (my favorite), and Beatrice, Maxim's sister. The narration moved along at a good pace, but was not rushed, and the sound quality was excellent. I highly recommend this audiobook version of "Rebecca." I have been having a problem concentrating on my reading lately, but this really helped me get out of my slump.