Buffy's October Recap

Buffy's and books in Paris, New York, and London!

Hello everyone,

I’m back in London after a lovely six weeks in New York, which at points in October was 28 degrees (in OCTOBER!). I had a whirlwind weekend in Paris, thanks to Sezane. Also this month, we had our most ambitious Buffy’s event yet in partnership with lighting brand Louis Poulsen, in the most incredible home in Brooklyn, and on the 28th we had our book club at London’s The Surprise pub in Chelsea (it’s cosy pub season!!), discussing Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. All this, plus upcoming events, below.

I had a amazing weekend in Paris with Sezane, and managed to fit in a few visits to some independent bookshops, photos below…I always forget how much I love Paris, and would love to host a Buffy’s event there one day.

Also this month, I hosted one of the biggest Buffy’s events to date, in collaboration with the lighting brand Louis Poulsen. We used the most stunning location house in Brooklyn (and serendipitously the owners already had, and loved, Louis Poulsen lighting!), adorned with books generously donated by Penguin Classics, New Directions and NYRB.

It was such a fun evening, the house was really spectacular and it was so nice watching everyone really take their time choosing their books to take home. We had catering from Pinch, who were brilliant and so incredibly kind and generous to work with. Drinks flowed all night long, and seeing so many people in this space all chatting away about books really warmed my heart. Thank you to everyone who came, and to Louis Poulsen who made this event possible!

I wore old jeans from Anine Bing, and a silk shirt from Another Tomorrow which NUMEROUS people said “wow that feel so nice on your skin” after giving me a hug. It is seriously soft.

Our October book club was held on the 28th in the beautiful pub The Surprise, in Chelsea, South-West London. This is a pub that feels like something straight out of a Richard Curtis film, with wallpapered rooms and cosy corners. We had the entire upstairs room, which was so wonderful, and a great, cosy space to discuss Daphne du Maurier’s slightly less cosy Rebecca.

Much like Iris Murdoch, the author of our July pick, and Mary McCarthy, our August pick, Daphne du Maurier was a very funny, interesting, and era-defining woman. Born in London in 1807, du Maurier, the daughter of an actress and prominent actor manager, was one of three sisters. In 1931 she published her first novel The Loving Spirit, and would go on to write 16 more, as well as three plays, nine short story collections, and more than ten works of non-fiction before her death in 1989. She cheated on her husband Frederick Browning multiple times, and was rumoured to have had affairs with women, as documented in Daphne, a 2007 BBC film on her life. In today’s vernacular, du Maurier may even have been considered non-binary, referring to the repressed side of her as the “boy in the box”. There are lots of brilliant photos of her wearing amazing suits and looking generally incredibly chic.

Daphne Du Maurier with her children at home in Cornwall, 1944.

du Maurier rented and restored a huge historic house in Cornwall between 1943 and 1969 called Menabilly, built in 1624, and has been owned very since by the Rashleigh Family, who du Maurier rented it from. She first came across the house as a teenager in the 1920s on a family holiday to Cornwall, much like the new Mrs De Winter in the novel. This is the building on which Manderley, the house that acts as a protagonist in Rebecca, is based on.

Daphne du Maurier with her children outside Menabilly, 1994.

In her preliminary notes for the book Rebecca, which was published in 1938, Du Maurier wrote:

“I want to build up the character of the first [wife] in the mind of the second...until wife 2 is haunted day and night...a tragedy is looming very close and CRASH! BANG! something happens.”

CRASH! BANG! feels like an appropriate way to describe the book - it is one of gothic twists and turns, and a consistent and total sense of eeriness.

Famously, the book was adapted by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940, starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier, which won the 1941 Oscar for Best Picture. In 2020, a Netflix adaptation was released and, perhaps less known, there was a 1964 Indian adaptation of Rebecca, titled Kohra. I watched both the Hitchcock version and the modern Netflix adaptation - the latter was awful, as many people at the book club agreed, and Hitchcock’s was incredibly atmospheric, but he was famously forced to change the ending due to Hollywood’s stringent moral code at the time, which alters the plot completely.

A still from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 adaptation of Rebecca.

Personally, I loved Rebecca, and found it such a great book for discussion. I was gripped throughout, and whilst it’s on the longer side (400 ish pages), du Maurier keeps a low level suspense brewing throughout, never becoming overly dramatic or unbelievable. The majority of the group felt similarly, though there was a huge division over our thoughts on each of the characters. I had felt a lot of sympathy for the new Mrs De Winter (who, as we discussed yesterday, is never named, a really interesting literary technique which reflected the character’s lack of agency), and was rooting for her and Maxim’s relationship, until I took a step back and realised the reality of Maxim’s actions. du Maurier, in the way Maxim’s murder of Rebecca is so casually revealed, makes us, like the new Mrs De Winter, feel less shocked by it, and in his passioned argument that Rebecca, essentially, deserved to die. Some people found Mrs De Winter’s weak-willed and insecure nature frustrating, particularly in her inability to take charge of Manderley. We discussed how Rebecca was an incredibly strong, era-defining woman, and drew a lot of parallels between her and du Maurier.

An amazing illustration of Mrs Danvers in one reader’s copy

This felt like a perfect October read, not dramatically spooky but rife with tension. I’m really excited to read more du Maurier - Buffy’s guests at the book club mentioned reading and enjoying Jamaica Inn, an equally famous novel of hers, but in my research I found she has written 17 novels, 9 short story collections, over 10 non-fiction works, and 3 plays, including a theatrical adaptation of Rebecca. A lot to choose from - if you’ve read other du Maurier works, please let me know in the Subscriber chat or the comments on this post, and do let me know all your thoughts on Rebecca (did you see the twist coming?!) below.

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What else I read in October:

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

This book is so widely beloved, which I think can be a blessing and a curse for a book. A blessing in that you eventually give in to the idea of a reading it, a curse because your expectations are set high. Westerns have been my favourite genre this year, The Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and Butchers Crossing by John Williams being two of my favourite reads, so it felt like the right time to tackle Lonesome Dove. Coming in at over 800 pages, it’s long, and it took a good 200 pages for me to get into it, so it’s a very different pace to the two aforementioned westerns. My love for westerns is ever increasing; the landscapes, the tension, the animals, the feeling of embarking on a journey with the characters are all aspects I find compelling. McMurtry certainly slows all that down, but makes sticking with the slower pace entirely worth it. We follow The Hat creek outfit, a group of cowboys who leave their ranch, Lonesome Dove, in Texas to embark on a cattle drive to Montana. It’s a book with deep characters, McMurtry gives you time to attach to each of them, and he brings all the characters together in a satisfying (perhaps a little predictable) way. The book didn’t surprise me at any point, but it took me in all the directions I wanted it too, all the storylines felt complete and considered, and as he gives you so much time to attach to the characters, I was glad he offered a full picture of what happened to each of them. It made me cry, which is rare for me with a book, and a testament to how well he wrote human relationships.

IT by Stephen King

I listened to this book, which is 44 hours long. FOURTY FOUR HOURS LONG. It took me the bast part of a month to listen to it all. If, like me, you find it hard to concentrate on audiobooks, King is a good place to start. He is a masterful storyteller. I wouldn’t consider him particularly literary, but he knows how to pace a novel, and his dialogue is always brilliant - two factors that I think translate well into audiobook. The narrator was brilliant too, he did so many different accents that really did make listening to something as long as this (did I mention it was FOURTY FOUR HOURS LONG) as engaging as possible. I feel the premise of IT is widely know; a murderous entity haunts Derry, Maine, and manifests in various forms… most famously Pennywise the clown. The regeneration of It happens in a 27 year cycle, so the book covers two time periods: the late 1950s when the ‘Losers Club’ were 12 years old, living in Derry and first encountering It, and again in 1985, where they all leave their various lives to return to Derry for the final showdown. The characters are all believable, and I think he did a great job of writing 12 year olds, that’s a hard age to capture! And I don’t think you can dispute King’s ability to write horror, he has a knack for a scene that will send a shiver down your spine and make you hold your breath, he knows how to balance the supernatural with the very human reaction to it (murderous leech-like creatures that belong to the supernatural, vs descriptions of how they feel, look, sound when tearing into someones flesh… truly unsettling). Despite this I would unfortunately cannot wholeheartedly recommending reading IT. The racism throughout the book almost made me give up on it about halfway through. It exists in the novel to demonstrate the sensibilities of the 1950s and the treatment of the one black character in the Losers Club, but it becomes such a big part of certain sections that it’s entirely gratuitous. The way Beverly, the only girl in the Losers Club is written was also uncomfortable, her sexuality and her body discussed more so than any of her male counterparts, which I really disliked when most of this was contained in the section when you are reading about a 12 year old girl. Finally, the much disputed ending. I won’t spoil anything, but it was one of the worst endings to a book I have ever read!! Especially disappointing when you have just dedicated FOURTY FOUR HOURS of your life to something.

Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan

A really, really gorgeous little book! I read it cover to cover in the airport and was transfixed by it. It’s about a woman’s experience working at the horse races, alongside the jockey’s, the drugs, the injuries, all while documenting a deep love and respect for horses. It was beautifully written, captivating and punchy, while also just being a really interesting topic. The physicality of the sport, of the animals, of what it means to care for them was powerfully portrayed - some of the simple scenes documenting the early starts to muck out the stables had a palpable strenuosity to them. One of my all time favourite novellas, and incredibly satisfying after the previous two very long books.

Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson

Another incredible short read, this is a series of short stories with a connecting protagonist. It’s bleak, following addiction and the ensuing squalor, and Johnson peppers it with humour that makes it enjoyable despite itself. It was one of those books where you read a scene and instantly know it will stick with you, even on the first page the line 'the travelling salesmen had fed me pills that made the linings of my veins feel scraped out’ made me recoil, and even to typing it out has made my hands sweat. It’s a visceral book, and Johnson knows how to achieve that in as few words as possible. There is no fluff, it just feels like one blow after the other, and yet his prose contains a beauty that makes it impossible to put down, and forces you to savour the blows.

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Upcoming events:

Our biggest Buffy’s event yet will be on November 13th at a location home in West London. Hosted in partnership with Penguin Vintage and Monica Vinader, the night will be a book swap evening, with readers having the chance to their favourite books and swap these with other guests. There will also be an opportunity to meet with a Vintage Editor for a session of ‘Bibliotherapy’, where Editors will advise you on new reads based on your favourites. St Germain are providing us with delicious drinks, plus plenty of books from Vintage, and amazing opportunities to speak to publishing experts about the books you love. Guests will be provided with bespoke jewelry pieces by Monica Vinader. Tickets for this event went on sale October 19th - a reminder to be subscribed to our Substack, follow us on Instagram, and Eventbrite, to recieve the latest updates and know when tickets are releasing.

I’m really excited to continue these larger, community events to help grow the Buffy’s community, and offer more opportunities to connect.

Please subscribe to our Substack, which is free for all, and follow us on Instagram for the latest.

Please, as always, share your thoughts on this month’s book below/via the usual channels.

Until next time!

Lizzy x

Photography by Lizzy Hadfield and
Additional research by Agnes Perotto-Wills

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