Hungry Hill

Hungry Hill (1979) – Daphne du Maurier
Penguin Books | ISBN: 0140023445
Condition: Fair | Sold by Crappy Old Books

Family fortunes. Those magnificent arrangements whereby one generation works tirelessly to accumulate wealth, the next enjoys the benefits, and subsequent generations devote themselves to squandering the inheritance, quarrelling over property and demonstrating that money is no guarantee of either happiness or common sense. Add a copper mine, an ancient Irish estate, simmering class resentment and a family apparently determined to manufacture its own misfortunes, and you have the ingredients for a proper Daphne du Maurier saga.

Welcome to Hungry Hill, a sweeping, atmospheric novel of ambition, inheritance, love, hatred and the uncomfortable consequences of believing that financial prosperity automatically entitles one to a satisfactory existence.

Set in nineteenth-century Ireland, the story follows five generations of the Brodrick family, wealthy landowners whose fortunes become inextricably linked to the copper mines of Hungry Hill. At the centre of their prosperity stands patriarch John Brodrick, a determined industrialist whose ambition to develop the family’s mining interests brings wealth, influence and an impressive collection of enemies.

Unfortunately, the local population is not universally delighted by the prospect of industrial expansion, particularly when the benefits appear to flow rather more enthusiastically towards the Brodrick bank account than towards those actually performing the labour.

The family’s bitter rivalry with the Donovans introduces a legacy of hostility that stretches across generations, while an ominous curse hangs over the Brodricks’ apparent success. As the decades pass, marriages, deaths, disappointed ambitions and personal tragedies gradually reveal the fragility of the dynasty’s position.

Du Maurier follows the family’s changing fortunes with her characteristic talent for creating atmosphere and psychological unease. The grand houses, rugged Irish landscapes and dangerous mining operations provide a wonderfully dramatic setting for characters whose greatest difficulties frequently arise not from poverty or external enemies but from their own personalities.

There is something magnificently ironic about a family that possesses almost every material advantage yet remains spectacularly incapable of arranging a peaceful domestic existence. The Brodricks have land, money, influence and opportunities unavailable to most of their contemporaries, but seem to regard contentment as an unnecessary indulgence.

Originally published in 1943, Hungry Hill was inspired partly by the history of du Maurier’s own ancestors, the Puxleys, and their copper-mining interests in County Cork. The novel combines historical detail with romantic tragedy and the author’s enduring fascination with the destructive power of obsession, pride and inherited expectations.

Unlike a conventional family chronicle celebrating the steady accumulation of prosperity, this is a darker examination of the price paid for wealth, the persistence of old grievances and the unsettling possibility that a family’s greatest inheritance may be its capacity for unhappiness.

This 1979 Penguin paperback, offered in Fair condition by Crappy Old Books, is an affordable vintage reading copy for admirers of Daphne du Maurier, enthusiasts of historical fiction and readers who appreciate a substantial family saga in which almost everybody would benefit from making rather better decisions.

A richly atmospheric journey through generations of ambition, resentment and decline, set against the dramatic landscape of nineteenth-century Ireland.

And proof that owning a copper mine, a country estate and a respectable family name may bring considerable advantages.

Unfortunately, none of them comes with a guarantee of happiness.

Particularly when the hill itself appears to have developed an appetite.

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