Customer Reviews

Mrs. De Winter

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(48)

 

 

My mother introduced me to Rebecca when I was twelve. I've adored the book ever since. I never wanted the book to end, and longed to know what happened to the characters after the tragic fire at Manderly. I was so excited to pick up Mrs. DeWinter. Two chapters into the book, I knew that I had made a dreadful mistake. I felt an obligation to finish the book, and I did. Ms. Hill causes readers to loathe Maxim, to think of him as a boorish lout. The second Mrs. DeWinter reads as flat, neurotic and weak. If I could erase this book from my memory I would. It is a disgrace to the original.

I can't think of a single good thing to say about it. It reads like an entry to those one of the Worst Writing contests--it is so bad, it's like a parody of pointlessly melodrama. Mrs. De Winter spent nearly the entire book inside her own head, sharing her thoughts, fears, and aimless existence and it sounded just like this: "I think I knew at once, in an instant, things would never be the same again, they couldn't be the same, not now, not ever, I was a fool to think otherwise, oh WHY didn't I see, why COULDN'T I see, that things were different but forever the same, always the same, they couldn't be otherwise, I know that now, I think I knew that then, but until that instant I didn't believe, didn't want to believe, that for me, things were just as before, exactly as before, forever haunting us, forever coming between us, just as before, unchanged........." Bleah.

The second Mrs. de Winter narrates this book, as she did Daphne du Maurier's classic REBECCA, to which it professes itself the sequel. She remains otherwise nameless, and through the first half of this novel sounds very much like herself. Author Hill has du Maurier's style down cold, in fact. In that respect I was very pleased.

The novel's second half, on the other hand, kept me reading almost solely for the beauty of the writing. As Maxim de Winter and his second wife make a permanent return to England, after 10 years in voluntary exile, the characters regress alarmingly and infuriatingly. Mrs. de Winter loses all the growth she attained during the first book's events, and during her years in exile. Maxim loses the wonderful complexity that made him such an intriguing hero. Was the point to get rid of the du Maurier book's moral ambiguity? If so, Hill accomplishes this quite nicely. She has her heroine tell us repeatedly that "we make our own destiny," and she sees to it that wrong is punished in proper black-and-white terms. By the time she's through, the characters who seemed so real precisely because they had as many dimensions as flesh-and-blood people have been rendered simple, manageable, understandable...and boring.

Competently written, but overall a huge disappointment.

The nameless narrator of Rebecca chronicles the downs of her marriage with Maxim DeWinter 10 years after the burning of Manderley. The couple have been abroad, leading a nomadic existence, fleeing old ghosts. But the nesting urge is strong in our heroine, and on a visit to England she takes a fancy to an unpretentious country estate. Then, to her chagrin, they're off again, to Istanbul, but for her birthday, Maxim surprises her with the deed to the estate. Back to England, where she potters around the garden and longingly imagines the children she hopes they'll have one day. When the blessed event/s fail to occur, she goes up to London to consult a doctor and there runs into the odious, now dissolute Jack Favell, who still has it in for Maxim.

The plot creaks along, becalmed by long stretches of interior monologue. Mrs. Danvers makes a wooden reappearance, Maxim never demonstrates one likeable, warm or witty moment, the heroine chickens out of multiple opportunities to show some backbone, and by the time tragedy comes at the end few readers will care.

This "sequel" was just plain BAD. Hill seemed to think all she had to do was mimic du Maurier's narrative style and dredge up the specter of Mrs. Danvers. Her characterizations are simply awful, like she just didn't pay any attention when she was reading REBECCA. I would be interested in reading a *true* sequel...one that shows how the DeWinters' relationship grew and progressed after they left Manderley. Hill just took zombie versions of the characters and made them dance around a bit before bringing her tedious tale to a depressing and completely unsatisfying conclusion.

I don't understand why sequels to brilliant novels are written long after the original author's death. They all fail miserably, yet continue to get published. Mrs. DeWinter might very well be the worst of the lot, with no character development, no plot, and absolutely NO point. Nothing is resolved, except the solution of who burned down Manderley, which was better left unknown. Susan Hill rambles on and on about nothing. The book is extremely boring and way OVERLONG and took me weeks to finish. I was so glad to finally be able to put the book away. Fans of Rebecca should not waste their time reading this garbage. Nothing in the book makes sense, from the narrarator's actions to Mrs. Danvers living down the street, to why Maxim has become so annoying and childish. The last page is the only decent one in the book. Save your time and money, this book was better left never being written.

Don't waste your time, what a big flop! Nothing like "Rebecca"! Daphne DuMaurier would roll in her grave right about now! Awful!

I couldn't wait for Mrs. De Winter to be available and was not only disappointed, but angered that it was allowed to be published. I have had the pleasure of reading Rebecca at least five times in the past twenty years and was always impressed with the main character's strength and maturity when she finally made her stand. In Mrs. De Winter, the author totally lost sight of this strength of character and expected the reader to accept a weak and frightened child bride again. For anyone who has read the original Rebecca, it is clear that this book (Mrs. De Winter) was published to make money on it's success. Shame on the publisher and the estate of Du Maurier for allowing this. Rebecca is probably one of the best gothic novels this century, it even is pivital in a fairly recent Ken Follett novel of the same title, Rebecca, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I am not writing this review to placate Mrs. Hill apparent thirst for success - which I assume was her basic premise when she decided to presumptuously write a sequel to a classic like "Rebecca"! I am doing so to prevent other fans to be trickied into spending their money on this shameless piece of garbage! The characters are shallow, the plot is insipid, and the ending is simply outrageous. When I finally put the book down I was dumbfounded and enraged. Do not waste your money buying this book and by no means waste precious time reading it. Thumbs down for Mrs. Hill and my advice to you is to stick to the original. And by the way - it does not deserve even one star!

I only found out this book existed a few years ago and jumped on it immediately. Anything as great as Rebecca would have a tough act to follow, no doubt about that, but this was just the most pathetic thing ever.

Ten years after Maxim was cleared of murder charges and Manderly burned down, the De Winters have returned to England after living in exile abroad. They are returning for the funeral of Maxim's sister, Beatrice, which proceeds the doom and gloom of the rest of this sorry book. Deciding to set up shop in England again as they have missed home, they purchase a new house and start all over again. Here we will have a sequal full of reoccuring characters from the first (Mrs. Van Hopper, Frank Crawley, Jack Favell, etc.) who appear to reinforce that this is the continuation of the story and nothing more. Most annoying of all these recurring characters is Mrs. Danvers, who appears out of no where and barges her way into the house one day. We were lead to believe that perhaps she had died in the fire, as she vanished without a trace. But no, she, in typical sequel fashion, returns for revenge to show us that she is still keeping Rebecca's memory alive (keeping a new room in a house with her things as if she just left, no less).

What was so disappointing about this book was that we were hoping that the second Mrs. De Winter and Maxim would somehow be happy even after the disaster at Manderly. She stayed with him, after all, and they had a clear love for each other that withstood through things that probably a thousand marriages would break up over. But no, Maxim commits suicide in the end. Rebecca won. The second Mrs. De Winter is left to live in doom, gloom and depression for the rest of her life, unless she too decided to end it all sometime after this tale ended.

If you feel you must read this, go right ahead, but don't let me or anyone else say "I told you so". It's dreary and depressing.