“Don’t Look Now” (1970)

I was surprised to find this long story by Daphne du Maurier in The Weird, but that could be me more than Jeff & Ann VanderMeer, editors of the essential anthology. I still don’t know exactly what to think about du Maurier. I’ve never read Rebecca, but I read “The Birds” as a kid—it creeped me out so much I was subsequently afraid of the movie, which then scared me badly when I managed to see it a year or two later (against parental approval). As an adult, I read her strange and original time travel novel The House on the Strand from 1969, which is worth looking into. Perhaps because of Rebecca I think of her more as a romance writer—or, OK, maybe gothic. “Don’t Look Now” first appeared in the Ladies’ Home Journal magazine, one of my favorite points about it. It has the smooth style of midcentury slick-page women’s magazine fiction too. There is a lot of disorienting cognitive dissonance with this one, at least for me. Nicolas Roeg, director of the impressive movie that came of this story, altered things a little. He made the husband an art restoration expert, whereas in the story he is only someone vaguely affluent on healing vacation with his wife. One confusing moment in the movie, a point I tended to miss, is much sharper here. It is actually the turning point of the story. This is when the husband sees his wife in a boat returning to Venice, when she had left for London earlier that day. She is with the mysterious elderly twins. The “weird” aspect here (I will conjecture, because I don’t always understand the VanderMeers’ critical genre distinctions) lies in the systematic way the couple is manipulated, not by the twins but by some force moving things around like pieces on a game board. It’s all more an elegant and refined type of horror—“restrained horror,” I sometimes call it. And the slick-page magazine tone can be hard to penetrate, with so much glossy surface. What is going on in this story? What are we supposed to make of the 30something couple who recently lost a child? Sympathy, obviously, reflexively. And what of the curious elderly twins, one of whom is blind and psychic? And the ending? It introduces a bizarre, unexpected element just at that point. Is it a cheat? Possibly, yes. But it works even so, as does the movie. Setting it in Venice is inspired and perfect—it works in a women’s magazine, it works as gothic, and it works as a Nicolas Roeg picture too.

The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Foundations of Fear, ed. David G. Hartwell
Listen to story online.