Summerbook #8: Castle Dor

 Castle Dor, by Arthur Quiller-Couch and Daphne du Maurier

Yep, this is my copy

You've almost certainly heard of the novelist Daphne du Maurier, writer of Rebecca and many other tales, often set in Cornwall.  As a young woman, she became friendly with Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who lived in Cornwall when he wasn't being an eminent Cambridge professor of literature.  He was working on a novel, but had little time for writing, and then the war came, and he died in 1944.  The manuscript was unfinished and had no notes about where it was going to go, but in 1960, du Maurier completed the novel at the request of Q's daughter.  The result is Castle Dor, set in a factual Cornish landscape (you can look up most of these spots on the map, though Dor is Dore now), but playing with legend.

In the early 1860s, a young and beautiful Mrs. Linnet Lewarne meets Amyot Trestane, a Breton sailor.  Somehow, their immediate attraction to each other sets in motion a long-past history, as they (and everyone around them) start to re-enact the story of Tristan and Iseult.  A whole community is unwittingly participating, even as only the local doctor knows the story and understands part of what is happening.  His efforts to stop the story's tragic conclusion may not succeed.

It's a fascinating novel, not very long, and it's fun to follow the geography and the doctor's historical investigations.  Was Castle Dor -- an Iron Age ring fort -- once the stronghold of King Mark?  Were nearby earthworks held by his knights?  I have my doubts, but it's a very fun read.

The plot reminded me strongly of Alan Garner's Owl Service, which was written just a few years later (and apparently I read it before I started this blog!).  I wonder if that kind of story was in the air at the time, the way Robert Graves' White Goddess theories were?