Kelly is an American critic and educator. In the following excerpt from his book-length biographical and critical study of du Maurier, he concludes that her characters often remain undefined and secondary to her formulaic plots, and that her best short stories are those that break out of this pattern, such as "Ganymede," "Don't Look Now, " and "The Birds. "

Forster is an English novelist, biographer, and critic. In the following excerpt from her authorized biography of du Maurier, she examines the stories collected in The Apple Tree.

A Canadian novelist and nonfiction writer, Millar is a critically acclaimed author of several mystery and suspense novels. In the following mixed review of Don't Look Now, she suggests that while du Maurier's stories are intriguing and entertaining, some have manipulative plots and unbelievable, superficial characters.

In the following review, Berkman praises Kiss Me Again, Stranger for its insightful representation of painful and frightening human experiences.

An English novelist and critic, Bradbury is best known as the author of such satiric novels as Eating People Is Wrong (1959) and Stepping Westward (1965). In the following review of The Breaking Point, he expresses several reservations about the individual pieces but calls du Maurier's short stories her best work.

[Francis Bacon] seems an odd choice for Daphne du Maurier, with her fine wayward imagination and her gothic suggestiveness. Few Elizabethans had less of the mantic about them than Bacon; few steered a less infernal course…. Bacon was humdrum both in his grandeur and his decadence. He went meekly, if glumly, to his disgrace, arraigned as a Poulson and not as a Trotsky. Yet some compulsion has drawn the author of Jamacia Inn, the biographer of Branwell Brontë, to this unlikely assignment…...

So Cinderella married the prince, and then her story began. Cinderella was hardly more than a school-girl, and the overworked companion of a snobbish woman of wealth; the prince was Maximilian de Winter, whom she had heard of as the owner of Manderley in Cornwall, one of the most magnificent show places in England, who had come to the Riviera to forget the tragic death of his wife Rebecca…. There was some mystery about Rebecca's death …; but the book is skillfully contrived so that it d...

In the following review of Kiss Me Again, Stranger, Barkham lauds du Maurier's craftsmanship as a mystery writer.

In the following review of The Breaking Point, Hurley commends du Maurier's talent as a suspense and horror writer, noting particularly her ability to create realistic settings and believable characters.

[Daphne du Maurier] has chosen to use whole portions of her girlhood diaries [in "Myself When Young"], verbatim, to gird her memory. The result is a gently gushing prose, full of exuberant clichés and heedless adverbs ("The tide of adolescence was running at full spate" and "This beauty is too much. It's defeating, utterly bewildering, Beauty most exquisite…. Somehow profoundly unhappy" …). (p. 18) If the memoir would have benefited from ...

Sullivan is an American novelist and critic. In the following negative review of The Breaking Point, he perceives du Maurier's approach to human interactions as shallow and calculated.

Growing Pains is about the delights and irresponsibilities of adolescence, the sowing of mild oats…. Writers of best-selling fiction tend to have peculiar bees in their bonnets, but if Dame Daphne has any she is keeping them for later. She writes with enough warmth and humour to captivate all but those who are allergic to the small stuff of childhood and other people's dogs and boats. E. S. Turner, "Mild Oats," in The Listener (© British Broadcasting Corp. 197...