Daphne Du Maurier

Halloween might seem like the spookiest time of year, but Charles Dickens and other great ghost story writers felt otherwise!

The Apple Tree

“Whichever way he turned in his chair, this way or that upon the terrace, it seemed to him that he could not escape the tree, that it stood there above him, reproachful, anxious, desirous of the admiration that he could not give.”

--------------------

I will say one thing: Daphne du Maurier really knows how to write characters that you love to hate, building up the tension little by little until you are invested in the story way more than you thought.

The Apple Tree is a slow-paced ghost story about guilt, spite, and obsessive resentment, the tension ebbing and flowing as an apple tree obstinately thrives in a recently widowed man's back yard, and along with it, the memories he would rather leave in the past.
My one point of disappointment was this: although it is marketed as a Christmas ghost story (or so it says on its cover), a great ghost story it is, a Christmas story? Not so much.

The Apple Tree

Reviews