We’re in the last few days of Daphne du Maurier Reading Week, run by Ali, and I am glad I managed to sneak in under the line with The Scapegoat from 1957. I did a poll on Twitter to see whether I should read this, short stories, The Parasites, or I’ll Never Be Young Again, which account for all the unread books I have by her – and I’m glad that this one topped the poll, because it’s rather brilliant. Truth be told, it tied with the short stories – but the people cheering on The Scapegoat were very convincing.
I didn’t know anything at all about it when I started, which was quite an exciting way to read the novel. But I can’t just stop writing then – so read on to have the premise of the novel spoiled. And it really does happen in the first handful of pages.
John is the first-person narrator – he is a university history lecturer from England, visiting France. In Le Mans, he happens upon his doppelgänger. Not just somebody who looks a bit like him, but somebody exactly like him. They even have the same voice, and John’s French is so good that this other man – Jean de Gué – didn’t realise John was English. They start drinking together… and eventually so drunk, or perhaps drugged, that John passes out in Jean’s hotel room.
When John wakes up – Jean has taken all of John’s possessions and gone. He is left with Jean’s clothes, luggage, identity documents – and none of his own. Left with little option, he decides to go to Jean’s house.
If you swallow the far-fetched concept of doppelgängers so identical that nobody at all can tell them apart, then this is a premise rife with possibility. And, look, it isn’t possible. I speak as someone with a literal clone, and very few people would think we were the same person. No matter – let’s go on with the show.
John-as-Jean arrives at his chateau. His earlier attempts to explain what has happened are taken as poor joke, and he takes the path of least resistance. It’s rather an ingenious way to introduce the new cast to us – because John, narrating, is as clueless as the reader as to who they are. There are several women, a child, an older woman, a man. Gradually, he works out how Jean relates to all of them – sussing out the histories and relationships without being able to ask outright. Why does he have bad blood with one of the woman, and apparently secrets with another? Which is his wife??
In their brief encounter, it was clear that Jean was a more ruthless, less pleasant man that John. As he stays there, it becomes increasingly obvious how this had affected things – and how Jean has set John up to be the scapegoat of the title. John is no saint himself – though motivated by much purer morals than his doppelgänger, he is weak and often foolish. And blindingly naive at times. For all that, he is very sympathetic, and du Maurier does a great job of making us feel his frustrations, fear, and dawning attempts to make the best of it.
If Daphne du Maurier had written this twenty years earlier, around the time she was writing Rebecca, this would be a brilliant set-up for something gothic, something in the mould of a thriller. Well, The Scapegoat is not that. It is a much more sophisticated take on the genre, if I can use the word ‘sophisticated’ as a value-free term: I still adore Rebecca; it’s still my favourite of her novels. But The Scapegoat is more of a character piece – after the fantastic premise, everything is believable and even likely. It’s a poignant unfurling of one man’s psyche, while he is similarly on the track of Jean’s. There are dramatic moments, but this isn’t really a dramatic novel. It’s all about personality and relationships and family, and gentle attempts to change things.
It’s also beautifully written. I’ve never seen du Maurier better at the incidental metaphor, descriptions of people and places, and above all subtle and precise descriptions of how John feels and responds.
As I say, Rebecca is still in a league of its own as a complete tour de force – but this is a clever, engaging, and unexpectedly nuance competitor.
