After I purchased this book of short stories, I noticed that the cover was a blurry photo of a face of a person in anguish, or so it looks to me. Later I learned that it is a video still from the horror film Repulsion. At that point I wasn't sure what to expect. Are these horror stories? I had never associated that word with Daphne du Maurier before, but it appears that many reviewers do consider some of her works to be horror. So far, however, I have found none of the stories in this book horrifying. I did find some of them dark and tension-inducing.
Each of the first three stories in this book are very different. They vary in length from 20 to 55 pages.
"Don't Look Now" has elements of the supernatural and is set in Venice, where an English couple is vacationing. They have recently lost their youngest child, and the trip is an attempt to move past that. Sometimes the supernatural in a story puts me off, but not in this case. The atmosphere is tense and I was dreading the outcome of the story. It wasn't what I expected at all. (about 55 pages)
The second story is "The Birds," which was the inspiration for the film by the same name. I say inspiration because the story is quite different from the film, but both are unsettling. The story focuses on a farm hand and his family who are trying to save themselves from birds of all types and sizes who are driven by some compulsion to invade their house. He recognizes the threat early on but most people laugh it off, and are not prepared.
This story comes the closest to horror (but then I don't read many horror stories). I would say that the story is darker than the film but it has been years since I have seen the film. (about 40 pages)
"Escort" confused me a bit, but I liked it. A tramp steamer is returning to England from a Scandinavian port in the early months of World War II. At some point they see the periscope of a German submarine. Another ship comes up beside them, offering to escort the ship to safety. At first I thought this one was just a simple, straightforward story, but it turns out to have a supernatural element too. (about 20 pages)
Patrick McGrath's introduction to this collection of stories notes that du Maurier often writes inconclusive endings; the stories are not tied up neatly, with a clear ending. She leaves the reader to embellish the ending or decide how they think the story ends. This is true of at least two of these stories: "The Birds" and "Escort." And "Don't Look Now" certainly left me tense and reviewing the events for quite a while after finishing it.
Per the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, "Escort" was first published in 1940, "The Birds" in 1952, and "Don't Look Now" in 1970.
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