Infobox
The Loving Spirit
Info
Status read Year Read 2026 Rating ★★ Shelves historical fiction, historical drama
Review
The Loving Spirit follows a family across four generations, beginning with a headstrong and wild-spirited, but loving and wise, matriarch named Janet Coombe. The story claims to be about an inborn love of the sea that touches some members of the lineage.
I don’t agree. I think the sea possesses them all one way or another, and the story is simply about those who were haunted by Janet’s own regrets.
Taking this story out of its time, I would say that it’s about the pain that gets passed on from parent to child, whether or not the child is beloved. Joseph was haunted by being so beloved of his mother he lived in the extremes of affection and deteriorated after she died. The rest of his siblings were haunted by not being beloved of their own mother, at least not the way Joseph is. And this chain is passed on until it is broken by Chris Coombe.
It’s about favoritism and parental expectations, and how legacy is a complicated thing. (I also think Janet had gender dysphoria although it doesn’t develop as a theme beyond her death.) I felt that the first normal person in the family was Chris, who is my favorite character. Joseph was absolutely misogynistic and I don’t think du Maurier knew that.
This book has been a test of my “loyalty.” This was the first novel of my favorite author. She improved a lot between writing this and writing Rebecca in 1938. I get the concept and the message, and the prose is still frequently moving, but I feel this deserved a more advanced version of its author. I feel it deserves a semi-modern rewrite, although I understand the challenges of taking it fully out of its time.