When I was 10 years old, I asked my father for a copy of Rebecca. I had won an abridged version of the book as a prize for a debate competition at school, and I was fascinated by the trials and tribulations of the mysterious Mrs. De Winter, her marriage to a much older widower and her obsession with his dead first wife – the book’s namesake. Snobby little me considered it quite an affront that the school had decided to give me an abridged version. I had to have the “grown-up” version.
It was the mid-2000s, and I was living in a remote township in Chhattisgarh. There were no bookstores, no Amazon, and no libraries. So, every time my father went on a work-related trip, I would hand him a list of titles. He rarely stuck to the list. Some books on it he considered me too old for – he once swapped out a Famous Five title for Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Other times he simply lost the list, so he would pick up whatever his eyes fell on at the Delhi airport bookstore.
But with Rebecca, he really tried. I had made it very clear how important it was that he got it for me. I told him it was fine if it was the only book he got me on that trip, but that he must get it. For the first time, he actually visited a bookstore outside of the airport to look for my book. He came home looking very pleased with himself and handed it to me. And my heart broke.
It was Rebecca, but the wrong one. I’d wanted Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, a cornerstone of Gothic literature written in the 1930s. I was looking forward to reading about sinister housekeepers and incestuous cousins. What I got instead was Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, a children’s novel by Kate Douglas Wiggin about a 10-year-old girl who goes to live with her spinster aunts.
I didn’t touch the book for a month. Everything was wrong – even the cover with a young, cheerful girl sitting under a tree, a complete contrast to the tone of my Rebecca. But never have I ever had the self-control to keep my hands off an unread book. I picked it up, determined to hate it. And I was transported. Into the village of Riverboro with its unique inhabitants, cowering alongside Rebecca at Aunt Miranda’s remonstrations. I felt such a sense of profound joy after finishing that book, like I had tripped over diamonds while looking for gold. It was one of the defining literary experiences of my life, teaching me literally to not judge a book by its cover.
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