There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.

Brighton Rock is intense to say the least. It may be a classic race against time thriller, but it’s also a strange, heady mix of poverty-sticken provincialism and the potential damnation of one’s eternal soul.

Why is Rebecca one of my favourite books? Well, the big twist holds up every time I read it, the protagonist’s anxieties become mine, and the atmosphere at Manderley is a heady mix of claustrophobia and lushness.