Read This!: The Scapegoat

By Daphne Du Maurier

I love a good Daphne Du Maurier book so I thought this could be a good read while I tried to find something better.

John, who has no last name, is an Englishman who is a Francophile.  He teaches about all things French and could masquerade as a native.  One night he meets a Frenchman, Jean de Gué, a count, who looks exactly like him.  John has no one in this world, Jean has a demanding family.  Jean drugs John and trades places with him.  On awakening from his drugged induced stupor, John feels he has no choice but to pass for Jean.  You following this?  John goes to the family château pretending he is Jean. No one suspects.  As the days pass, John becomes more and more involved in the lives of the de Gué.

Like most of Du Maurier's books, I thought the ending was key.  It was the "right" ending but it left me with ambiguous feelings about it.  Like, I know it was right, but I kind of wanted a different ending, where the other triumphed.

I did find the premise a little hard to believe because would people really not know if someone switched places with their husband, father, brother, son?  Even if they looked exactly the same?

My last note is there was a decent amount of French in this book considering there were no translations anywhere like in a footnote.  I thought this was strange even though I speak French, I felt if this were a different language I might be annoyed.