Frenchman’s Creek – Daphne Du Maurier (1941)Pampered Lady Dona St Columb, bored by the royal court and her tiresome husband, absconds to her family’s Cornwall estate with her two children. There she encounters sexy French pirate, Jean-Benoit Aubréy, who has been using the secluded creek on her property as a base for his attacks on wealthy local estate owners.
Frenchman’s Creek at first appears a simplistic romping historical romance with shades of Harlequin Mills and Boon – and it is certainly Du Maurier’s most obviously categorised work – yet there is something almost paradoxical about her approach which sets the novel somehow apart. It is atmospheric and suspenseful but more light hearted than her other novels and, traditionally, Du Maurier's rich, dreamy prose illuminates idyllic Cornwall and her characters are beautifully portrayed.
Dona is thoroughly entertaining with her caustic wit and questionable scruples – she makes an engaging heroine as she negotiates between swashbuckling adventure and responsibility. Yet in Dona we also find the novel’s greater complexities – notions of identity and self – and it is this juxtaposition that lifts Frenchman’s Creek out of its genre pigeon hole.
Frenchman’s Creek is at times melodramatic, often whimsical and implausible, but beautifully written and utterly entertaining.
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