VANISHING CORNWALL

Daphne du Maurier was accompanied in her search by her son, Christian, who has taken the photographs. He was brought up in Cornwall and shares his mother’s intuitive sense of the dramatic. Together they visited all the scenes described in the book, and page by page the superb photographs follow and illuminate the text. Drawn on by Daphne du Maurier's vivid, highly individual prose, by the magic which lights up all her books, and by the lovely illustrations, the traveller to Cornwall, and the reader who does not stir from his chair, may wander in truth or fancy from the Tamar to Land's End - along the coasts, across the moors, avoiding the tourist centers in the tourist season (for then disillusion breaks in, the atmosphere is lost, the vision shatters). before the hot dog stand and the cheap motel destroy the romantic heritage of Cornwall, Daphne du Maurier would leave us this exquisite portrait of a wild and beautiful land.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.