There are recurring themes in this novel. Take the motif of a broken ornament, for instance. In "Rebecca", the episode where the new wife accidentally destroys a valuable china ornament given to her predecessor (Rebecca) on her marriage, and becoming a particular favourite, is powerfully symbolic. Here there is a similar event involving Anne-Marie and her mother, and a porcelain cat and dog, Years of study, years of training, the fluency with which I spoke their language, taught their history, described their culture, had never brought me closer to the people themselves. I was too diffident, too conscious of my own reserve. My knowledge was library knowledge, and my day-by-day experience no deeper than a tourist’s gleanings. The urge to know was with me, and the ache. The smell of the soil, the gleam of the wet roads, the faded paint of shutters masking windows through which I should never look, the grey faces of houses whose doors I should never enter, were to me an everlasting reproach, a reminder of distance, of nationality. Others could force an entrance and break the barrier down: not I. I should never be a Frenchman, never be one of them." Evil Jean conks him out with booze, changes John's identity into his own privileged, noble one- then exits, stage right.

so do you, and Renée, and the woman in Villars". I didn't answer her"' (p.283). Jean's mother concludes by saying 'You've got what you wanted, haven't you?' And if you could step into one of these men's lives - by trading places --as a stranger/ actor taking over the role.... how do you think you might make a difference? And how might you do harm? In THIS story...we get the opportunity to watch how the entire scenario - this crazy game - so to speak - affects each person. There he meets his doppelgänger's family: Jean's feeble, pregnant wife Françoise and over-imaginative young daughter Marie-Noel; his dull brother Paul and embittered sister Blanche; Paul's frustrated wife (and Jean's mistress) Renée; and Jean's elderly, morphine-addicted mother. As he learns about the decades of resentments and failures that haunt the family, John feels he should do something to help put things right. If only life were this simple. If only human relationships were straightforward, with little or no difficulties, no web of intricacies to disentangle. John, as the new Comte Jean de Gué, finds himself taking on a failing business and a family with secrets and complex feelings. John will come to know Jean through this family and his interactions with them. Jean may not be the kind of person our narrator would wish to emulate if given a choice. But isn’t he somehow responsible for these people now that he has allowed himself to be an accomplice to this deception? Does he want Jean to fail because he feels a victim in this charade? Perhaps John is Jean de Gué’s scapegoat, or maybe another is fulfilling this role in the drama that plays out in this wounded family. Since reading Du Maurier’s most celebrated novel – Rebecca– I’ve bought every single one of her publications I’ve been able to get my hands on. So much so that I now own four copies of Rebecca, three of Frenchman’s Creek and two of both Jamaica Inn and My Cousin Rachel – an impressive, though equally pointless, collection of some of her most loved books.He thinks the only motive force in human nature is "GREED". People in Jean de Gue's life were never satisfied--[from his point of view]. So don't expect one of those thrillers with a water-tight plot and gritty realism. This is a story about wish-fulfillment and the freedom of discovering in yourself a whole new set of possibilities. It's also about thinking of your life as it might look from the outside, as viewed by a stranger taking your place; what would he see that you're missing? Count your blessings, you fool!

At this point just less than half-way through, the dream-like quality is notched up a step, and we realise that John is beginning to perceive another, darker, personality hidden within his own self, much as the character "Doctor Jekyll" did, but more subtly. Although Jekyll became subsumed and ultimately destroyed by the malignant influence of Hyde, John conversely seems to become more self-possessed and confident through his exploration of his darker self. He seems to become, in a sense, a more complete character, and his past a mere shadow. While Standing is out at a shooting party lunch with the rest of the family, Spence manipulates Frances into taking an overdose of morphine so that he can claim the trust fund and save the glass business. She willingly submits, sacrificing herself to save her family. Her daughter, "Piglet," sees them together and confronts Standing, still mistaking him for her father. Standing rushes to the house to find Frances barely alive; he revives her with help from Charlotte, Spence's mother's carer. When John first arrives at the de Gue chateau, every member of the household is a stranger to him but we (and John) are given enough clues to gradually figure out who each person is and what their relationship is to Jean de Gue. From the neglected pregnant wife and the hostile elder sister to the resentful younger brother and the religious ten-year-old daughter, every character is well-drawn and memorable. I was like John as a kid - a reader; a dreamer; an underachiever. What was I worth to the world at large? Soon John finds himself enmeshed in a complicated web of lies and intrigues, with a grand house full of women and various strangers, most of whom seem angry at him. And then there is a great big beastly woman upstairs he is astounded to find looks like himself but in drag with a huge amount of flesh added on; Jean's mother, which he can't help but call 'maman' and feel real affection for. Nobody takes him seriously when he tells them outright he is not Jean, but an Englishman called John, and that the real Jean has made off with his clothes and his car; they all dismiss his story as yet another one of Jean's pranks, or a consequence of too much drink. Instead a man angrily demands how the trip to Paris went and whether he's gotten the papers signed. John slowly untangles the mystery, starting with figuring out who the various individuals are, what Jean was meant to do in Paris, why everyone is angry with him, and then, taking a liking to the man's various family members and employees despite their faults of character, trying to improve everyone's life and atone for Jean's shortcomings, bumbling along all the while.

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The book, after a brief slow start through John/Jean's initial meeting, is both spellbinding and transfixing. We share the narrator's experience and trepidation of walking in another man's shoes - literally - and are willing him to not put a foot wrong, which he does regardless, and, to his incredulity, his part of the deception remains undiscovered by any family member, of the human variety at least. mother off morphine, 'tonight she'll be a raving maniac', and he thinks that John's plan for Renée and Paul will break up their marriage even sooner, 'Renée when Marie-Noel had gone missing, Françoise worried that 'the child might have turned against her. She is too fond of her papa, she said, and of Mademoiselle Blanche'

Indeed there are at least two other contenders for the description of "scapegoat". Either the daughter or the wife could be seen in these terms. Marie-Noel seems over-eager to sacrifice herself for her father, as does Françoise, the Count's wife. The intensity of the little girl Marie-Noel's relationship with her father is clearly a reflection of that between the author, Daphne du Maurier, and her own father, the charismatic actor-manager Gerald du Maurier. 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. I think that’s as much as I can say without spoilers. This is another book that grabs me so much it’s hard for me to put down.you' (pp.364-5). John says that at St Gilles his failure turned into love but 'the problem remains the same. What do I do with love?' (p.367). He leaves resolving to follow his original path to the Abbey de la Grande Trappe.

During this evening the men continue drinking and talking. Jean de Gue takes John to a restaurant....driving John's car ( after all, he knows it city best), and brings them to a shabby hotel.... and says "Sometimes, these places can be useful".In The Scapegoat, her ancestral glass-blowing foundry became the failing business of the de Gué family. They in turn were depicted as more grand, in fact minor aristocrats, the Comte and Comtesse. And instead of writing herself into the story, the author took on the guise of a male narrator, one of five occasions in major novels when she did this. One of the triggers was that while out for a walk in a square in a French town, Daphne du Maurier saw a man who looked identical to someone she happened to know. According to one of her biographers, Judith Cook, she then watched a family scene through a window, and began to put the two incidents together in her feverish imagination. Typically, she began to wonder about the people; who they were, and what their secrets might be, men who look exactly alike, a teacher and a wealthy business man with a complicated personal life and business in trouble meet. The teacher inhabits the life of the business man who disappears. It's quite delightful and perfectly written how he interacts with the family members and romantic entanglements of the wealth man. This classic gem is a piece of riveting. edge-of-your-seat suspense in the best tradition of the Queen of Cliffhangers. The Scapegoat is a 1957 novel by Daphne du Maurier. In 1959, it was made into a film of the same name, starring Sir Alec Guinness. It was also the basis of a film broadcast in 2012 starring Matthew Rhys and written and directed by Charles Sturridge.