The Ghost and Mrs Muir (Book Review)

 

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
by R. A. Dick (=Josephine Leslie), 1945

Vintage Movie Classics Kindle Edition
with foreword by Adriana Trigiani

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"The book that inspired Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s cinematic romance from 1947 starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison  is a 1945 novel by Irish writer Josephine Leslie (1898–1979), written under the pseudonym of R.A. Dick.
 
Burdened by debt after her husband's death, Lucy Muir insists on moving into the very cheap Gull Cottage in the quaint seaside village of Whitecliff, despite multiple warnings that the house is haunted. Upon discovering the rumors to be true, the young widow ends up forming a special companionship with the ghost of handsome former sea captain Daniel Gregg. Through the struggles of supporting her children, seeking out romance from the wrong places, and working to publish the captain's story as a book (Blood and Swash) Lucy finds in her secret relationship with Captain Gregg a comfort and blossoming love she never could have predicted.
 
Originally published in 1945, made into a movie in 1947, and later adapted into a television sitcom in 1968, this romantic tale explores how love can develop without boundaries, both in this life and beyond."

I just recently had an offer to buy this Kindle book for only $2.11. (I'm afraid it seems the price has gone up again already.) I know I've seen the film on TV some time in a distant past, but did not really remember the story.

I found the book quite a page-turner, with a good sense of humour, and a much better read than I really expected. It also seems to me that there may be other ways to interpret it than as a supernatural romantic ghost-story. Lucy is feeling rather trapped by her situation as a young widow. Both her relatives and society in general are putting a lot of pressure on her to do what they consider would be best for her - which is certainly not to go and live on her own (with her two young children) in an isolated, cheap old cottage on the coast, which also has a reputation for being haunted. Lucy learns from the sea captain's portrait what he looked like; but for the most part she only hears him speaking to her. And on the few occasions when he seems to interact with others in her surroundings, well, that may be open to interpretation as well. My own impression is that more than anything else, the Captain is "in her head", as a kind of alter ego that helps her break conventional patterns when needed. Sometimes his presence is stronger, sometimes he keeps away for a while. (The film I suppose might make him seem more tangible. But it must be decades ago that I saw it, and I don't really remember the details.)

Quotes:

"They left her nothing of her own. They chose her servants, her dresses, her hats, her books, her pleasures, even her illnesses."

"The voice was not really there either, she did not hear it with her ears, it seemed to come straight into her mind like thought, but how could it be her thought when she never swore."

"Do  you believe in psychoanalysis?" asked Lucy. "It's a new science, and they are only experimenting," said Captain Gregg.

"There aren't any earthly words to fit this other dimension, just as there weren't any earthly words to fit telegraphy and electricity till the scientists worked their way up to these things."

"Of course she's deaf," said the captain, "spiritually deaf. She can't hear me - she's only tuned into earth and herself."

"And if you have anything to say to me, think it. There's no need for you to speak to me out loud, I can hear all you think."