The Scapegoat (Virago Modern Classics)

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The basic plot is that a Frenchman in his early 40s runs into another man, an Englishman in his early 40s, who is a body double of him (doppelgänger). By clever means and not to his liking the Englishman finds himself forced to impersonate the Frenchman and inherits the Frenchman’s life and family…a brother and a sister and a mother and they’re all messed up to varying degrees, and a wife, and she is unhappy because her husband has been essentially ignoring her and only married her for a potential buttload of money if she produces a son for him (complicated legal arrangement regarding her dowry). Oh and that’s just the beginning…he inherits a precocious 11-year old daughter, a sister-in-law (who he is having an affair with), a valet, a mistress, a glass factory that is floundering… And given this is a du Maurier novel there have been sinister things happening well into the past…that this Englishman now fake Frenchman is going to have to deal with. Perhaps vaguely reminiscent of ‘Heaven Can Wait’, a film from the late 1970s starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie (and a gaggle of other good actors)…although that was a comedy/love story when push comes to shove. Not a whole lot to laugh at in this novel. In fact nothing really. 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, an English lecturer in French history, is on holiday in France. In Le Mans, he meets a French count, Jean de Gué, who looks and sounds exactly like him. As the two drink together, John confesses that he is depressed, feeling as though his outward life is a meaningless façade, and the pair move on to a hotel where John passes out. Next day he wakes to find his clothes and possessions gone, with Jean's chauffeur urging him to get dressed (in Jean's clothes which are left for him) and come home to the ancestral château.

On another occasion, when the reader is finally about to learn the truth about the mysterious Maurice Duval,

Wonderful story, well acted by all involved, particularly Matthew Rhys in the dual role as the gentle John and the aggressive Johnny, who is only out for himself. At the end, his mother's nursemaid (Phoebe Nichols) has some words of wisdom. I love the ending.

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. It stops at the right place for it to stop, but still, I’ve often wondered what happened after the end. I knew that everything I had said or done had implicated me further, driven me deeper, bound me more closely still to that man whose body was not my body, whose mind was not my mind, whose thoughts and actions were a world apart, and yet whose inner substance was part of my nature, part of my secret self."The secret of life is to recognize the fact early on, and become reconciled. Then it no longer matters". John has a premonition that meeting his double could be 'fraught with tragedy, like the Man in the Iron Mask' But - to her - it seemed the perfect Christmas gift for my young self! I never knew WHY until I finally started to read it, sixty-odd years later (thanks to my friend Sara’s recommendation on GR)! Further, his love for the real Jean de Gué's family and his distaste for the man's apparent selfishness is shared by the reader. His discomfort at the circumstances in which he finds himself, and his willing collaboration with the deception, causes not judgement from the reader; rather, we wish him success in the plans he sets in motion, thereby exposing our own active entanglement in his scheme also.

The Scapegoat is a British film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 1957 novel of the same name. The drama is written and directed by Charles Sturridge and stars Matthew Rhys as lookalike characters John Standing and Johnny Spence. It was broadcast on ITV on 9 September 2012. The narrator, and viewpoint character, is an Englishman named John. At the start of the novel we learnt that John is dissatisfied with his life as a university lecturer, and tending to become depressed with what he sees as a futile life. It is evident that he is travelling through France, where he meets a man who eerily is his double in looks; a confident French count, Jean de Gué. Intrigued despite himself, John plays along with the Count's wishes, indulging in a night of drinking, and staying in an anonymous downbeat hotel overnight. On waking, he discovers that the man has disappeared, taking all John's own clothes and belongings, and leaving him to play the role of the "Comte Jean de Gué". Thus we have the novel's basic premise. Even the structure of this one sentence gives the impression of hurtling towards doom. It does not let up; there is no break.Matthew Rhys of 'the Americans' is a good actor and it's quaint to hear him speak with a British accent since he is more well know internationally always playing an American. One thing I noticed and found surprising is that the book is less gothic than the other novels of hers that I've read ( Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel). There are fewer of the traditional gothic tropes on display (the house as a main character, ghosts or dead who preoccupy the minds of the characters, letters received from people long dead, animals who meet bad ends, dark eroticism). I'd say this book is more of a mystery, if I had to classify it. Daphne du Maurier had the idea for The Scapegoat when she was in France in 1955, to research the lives of her ancestors, the Busson-Mathurins, who were glass-blowers. She did subsequently write the novel for which she intended this research, entitling it "The Glassblowers" (1963). But before writing it, she became distracted by a number of incidents that happened to her in France, which inspired the plot of The Scapegoat, published in 1957. She apparently wrote it at record speed, finishing within six months, and then collapsed with nervous exhaustion. was a historian and gave lectures in England about his country and it's past. Not married - and has no children.