Don't Look Now and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier

Yet read without expectation they’re entertaining and engrossing. The other stories in the collection follow a similar pattern as gossipy, slightly hammy tales. And, whether you’ve seen the film or not, the final twist no longer packs a punch. What follows isn’t entirely similar to Nicholas Roeg’s 1973 film adaptation the written story is more a slow-burn of pedestrian details (marriage, Italy, dinner). In Don’t Look Now, grieving parents John and Laura holiday in Venice, where they meet two sisters who tell Laura their dead daughter “is sitting between you and your husband.” This creepy announcement kicks-off a bizarre chain of events. Her characters are humdrum people struggling to discover a truth – only to be misled each time by their own shortsightedness.

What is Don’t Look Now about?ĭaphne du Maurier’s 1971 short story collection includes Don’t Look Now, Not After Midnight, A Border-Line Case, The Way of the Cross and The Breakthrough. “No luck, I’m afraid.Du Maurier’s short stories have been adapted to great effect on-screen, but serve up dread and brilliance on the page, too. She began screaming again, and the father, making soothing sounds, bore her away from the top of the steps and was lost in the crowd.

Robin waited to see if the father would put her down, cured. The child herself, bewildered, distraught, rolled her frightened eyes over the heads of the crowd. Then, smiling in triumph at the curious watchers above, he ascended the steps to safety, his wife smiling with him, mopping the child’s face with a towel. Freeing one hand, he dipped it in the Pool and sloshed the water three times over his daughter, wetting her face, her neck, her arms. There they go, he said to himself, as the father, ignoring the child’s terrified screams, slowly descended the steps. Perhaps Jesus realized the water was bad. The man who had been lame for thirty-eight years was lucky when Jesus came along and healed him instantly, rather than waiting for someone to lift him into the Pool. Grandfather must be right, and it formed part of the city drain.

It was certainly not much of a place, the water dark and rather slimy, the steps slippery-looking too. “He leaned over the rail and stared down into the Pool with interest.

Don't Look Now and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier