Stories within stories

‘The past is still too close to us. The things we have tried to put behind us would stir again.’

Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca features throughout Beneath the Shadows. The quote above forms the epigraph, and sums up the heart of my story perfectly. And in the novel itself, my main character Grace begins to read the book while she is searching for her husband. As she draws ever nearer to the answers she craves, so the second Mrs de Winter gets closer to learning the truth from her beloved Maxim.

From the very beginning I knew there were parallels between Grace’s story and du Maurier’s classic novel. I reread Rebecca twice while I was working on Beneath the Shadows to examine how du Maurier built characters and atmosphere, but the idea of making the book such an overt feature of my narrative didn’t occur to me until a little while after I began writing Beneath the Shadows. It was when I was developing Grace’s fearful dreams that I began drawing Rebecca into the story more and more. When I looked at the way I dreamt, it was noticeable that when I was unsettled I had to pick the books I read or the films I watched quite carefully, because they were liable to creep into my dreams in some way. Once I recognised this I knew at once which book I wanted Grace to be reading, and I loved playing with the way that different events affected Grace’s subconscious.

The other book that features in my novel was conceived very differently. Ghosts of the Moors is a fictional collection of folktales about the North Yorkshire moors area. Its author, Connie, is a relative of Grace’s husband, Adam, and she has some secrets of her own. Grace’s sister accidentally discovers the truth in a short story you can find at www.randomhouse.com.au/beneaththeshadows. I hope you enjoy revisiting the book in this extra chapter – and who knows, there could be more mysterious tales in this family that have yet to be uncovered.