Thrillingly exciting, beautifully written, passionate but never
sentimental, Jamaica Inn is perhaps the most accomplished
historical romance (in the proper sense of the word) ever written.
It is set in early 19th-century Cornwall, at a time when the forces
of order are gradually beginning to curb the reckless lawlessness
of this wild region. After the death of her mother, Mary Yellan
decides to leave her peaceful home in South Cornwall and travel up
country to live with her Aunt Patience, who is married to Joss
Merlyn, the landlord of the Jamaica Inn. The inn is a wretched
place, solitary on the desolate moors between Bodmin and Launceston
and shunned by those who pass it, but even more shocking to Mary is
the state of her aunt, once a merry pleasure-loving woman but now
wasted away by the brutality of her husband. As she tries to make a
life for herself in the face of her aunt's pathetic fear and her
uncle's contempt and viciousness, Mary begins to realize that
Jamaica Inn is the centre of a criminal network stretching the
length and breadth of the county, and that she must choose between
protecting her aunt and destroying her uncle's evil trade. The
story is a gripping one, made much more so by du Maurier's powerful
evocation of the landscape it is set in. The bleakness of the moors
mirrors Mary's loneliness and the cruelty of Joss Merlyn and his
kind, but there is also a wild beauty to them, and an entrancement
that begins to take hold of Mary in the same way as her growing
attraction to Joss's arrogant horse-thief brother Jem. Natural
forces dominate everything, from the harsh wind that sweeps across
the tors to the unwilling desire Mary feels for Jem. As the
narrative builds to its terrifying conclusion, du Maurier refuses
to allow us a conventional happy ending - the imperatives of nature
are too strong, and Mary must obey them like the generations before
her. (Kirkus UK)
After the death of her mother, Mary Yellan crosses the windswept
Cornish moors to Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience. There
she finds Patience a changed woman, downtrodden by her domineering,
vicious husband Joss Merlyn. The inn is a front for a lawless gang
of criminals, and Mary is unwillingly dragged into their dangerous
world of smuggling and murder. Before long she will be forced to
cross her own moral line to save herself.
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