Rebecca's Tale (Hardcover)

The book opens on April 12, 1951, the 20th anniversary of Rebecca's death. "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again", writes Colonel Julyan, an old family friend of the de Winters. As old age and ill health threaten to overtake him, 20 years of doubt about the true cause of Rebecca's death are sharply reawakened with the arrival of an anonymous parcel containing a small black notebook entitled Rebecca's Tale. Meanwhile, a mysterious stranger, recently arrived in the locality, appears equally determined to find answers to the string of inconsistencies raised by Rebecca's life and death. The Colonel and his dutiful daughter Ellie are both drawn to the handsome, intelligent Terence Grey but both are wary and wonder if he really is what he appears to be.

As the plot twists and turns, the revelations are both shocking and inevitable. Favourite characters--spooky Mrs Danvers and Jack Favell, Rebecca's reckless cousin-­drift in and out. This is a big book (495 pages), yet, once begun, most will find it difficult to put down­-just as well for there are so many complexities it doesn't do to take your time. Ultimately, Rebecca's Tale offers its own version of events, yet for du Maurier fans, it is reassuring in that it raises many more. And, cleverly, Beauman has added her own, somehow more relevant sub-plot. Perhaps the "truth" about Rebecca's life is only as important as the legacy she left those whose lives she touched. What they choose to do with it, and how they choose to live their lives, is the central issue here. This novel will appeal to anyone who has ever read Rebecca and, thanks to her finely woven plot and subtle undercurrents of hope and inspiration, it will appeal just as much to those who have not. --Carey Green

Review
Writing the sequel to a well known, much loved novel is a dangerous and rarely successful endeavour. Very occasionally the sequel takes on a life of its own and becomes an outstanding novel in its own right, with little to tether it to the original. Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, for example, told the story of the mad first Mrs. Rochester from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. It is a wonderful read, utterly independent of Jane Eyre. Sally Beauman fails to achieve anything like this success. She obliterates the mystery and atmosphere of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca by explaining it all away. She even misjudges irony to the extent of opening with; 'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again', a cheap trick which was also attempted in the sequel to Pride and Prejudice. This time it isn't the mousy second wife of Max de Winter speaking but Colonel Julyan, a minor character in the original and now the first of narrators in Rebecca's Tale. Set twenty years after Rebecca's death and the destruction of Manderlay, Beauman introduces a cast of characters who are sympathisers of the apparently much maligned Rebecca. Colonel Julyan now claims to have been in love with Rebecca and one of the families closest friends. He is beset by guilt for failing to prevent her being buried in the family crypt and for allowing her reputation as a faithless, sadistic, unscrupulous, amoral woman to take root. The whole novel challenges Max de Winter's justification for killing her and reverts to the notion that he was simply insanely jealous and introduces the idea that his class and upbringing destined him never to understand or love the bohemian spirit he married. This attempt to politicise the original text is doomed to failure and the final narrator, Ellie, Colonel Julyan's youngest daughter is given a laughable exit line meant to satisfy both feminist principles and the demands of romantic fiction, predictably fulfilling neither. (Kirkus UK)

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again ". . . and again and again. Estate-authorized remake of the classic Daphne du Maurier suspense novel, unimaginatively told from several points of view, in exhausting detail. Let's see, there's Colonel Julyan, Rebecca's faithful friend, now 20 years older and much frailer but determined to tell his side of the story if his daughter Ellie would just stop coddling him. Old soldiers never die-and this one never shuts up, either. Beset by, um, dreams of Manderley, he eventually unburdens himself to Terence Gray, a historian seeking to find out more about the mysterious Rebecca while he comes to terms with the ghosts of his own past. Gray's a thoughtful, thorough chap with a knack for drawing out dotty spinsters and other odd folk. Jump back 20 years and Rebecca herself chimes in (rather melodramatically), answering most but not all of the questions raised by Julyan and Gray. Then practical-minded Ellie has her say, and the second Mrs. De Winter pops up at the very end. The story remains much the same: Rebecca, the beautiful, much-admired mistress of Manderley, is emotionally distant from her wealthy husband Max de Winter, who thinks she's having an affair, and suspects her dissolute cousin Jack Favell, among others. Then Rebecca disappears shortly after a clandestine visit to a London doctor. Was she pregnant? Was Max the father? Was she murdered? Her sailboat is dredged up a year or so later, with her corpse inside. Meantime, veteran romancer Beauman ("Danger Zones", 1996, etc.) adds a Dickensian ensemble of minor characters from several generations, including orphans and actors and lovelorn ladies. A discreet attempt is made to spice things up with hints of incest and similar goings-on, but the tone is off-and noticeably lacking the plangent melancholy of the original. More an endless explanation than a sequel. (Kirkus Reviews)

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