Rebecca's Tale: A Novel [Hardcover]

Sally Beauman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 2001

April 1951. It is twenty years since the death of Rebecca, the hauntingly beautiful first wife of Maxim de Winter. It is twenty years since the inquest, which famously -- and controversially -- passed a verdict of suicide. Twenty years since Manderley, the de Winters' ancient family seat, was razed to the ground.But Rebecca's tale is just beginning.Family friend Colonel Julyan receives an anonymous parcel in the post. It contains a black notebook with two handwritten words on the first page -- Rebecca's Tale -- and two pictures: a photograph of Rebecca as a young child and a postcard of Manderley.A mysterious young scholar by the name of Terence Gray has also appeared in town, looking for clues to Rebecca's life and death. His presence causes a stir in the quiet hamlet, and the tongues that had wagged about Rebecca years before now attend to the close ties Gray has formed to the Colonel and his single daughter, Ellie.Amid the intrigues of this small coastal town, Ellie, Gray, and the Colonel begin a search for the real Rebecca. Was she the manipulative, promiscuous femme fatale her husband claimed, or the Gothic heroine of tragic proportions that others have suggested? Was her death really suicide, or was it murder?Sally Beauman has taken Daphne du Maurier's celebrated twentieth-century classic, Rebecca, and crafted a compelling companion for the twenty-first century. Haunting, evocative, mesmerizing, Rebecca's Tale is for anyone who has ever dreamed of going back to Manderley.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Published more than 60 years ago, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca still captivates, at least partly because of its insistent ambiguity: we never learn definitively whether Maxim de Winter murdered his stunning first wife, Rebecca, or why Maxim so hastily remarried a mousy younger woman, famously unnamed. Selected by the du Maurier estate, Beauman (Destiny) has written a "companion" to Rebecca that preserves, and even deepens, the earlier novel's crafty evasions. Set in 1951, two decades after Rebecca's death was ruled a suicide, Beauman's story opens with the same (now famous) sentence as the earlier book: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." Elderly, ailing Colonel Arthur Julyan was magistrate in the district when the legendary de Winter mansion mysteriously burned to the ground. Julyan's last days are disturbed by the intrusive visits of Terence Gray, a Scottish academic who claims to be writing a book about Rebecca's death. Then both Julyan's sharp daughter Ellie and Gray, who has secrets of his own, become rattled when Rebecca's personal effects begin arriving at the Julyan home. One of the anonymously sent packages contains Rebecca's journal, written just before her death a possible Rosetta stone. Beauman expertly tells Rebecca's tale from four different perspectives Julyan's, Gray's, Ellie's and, most vividly, Rebecca's without settling which version is nearest the truth. Though a composite Rebecca emerges depressive, possibly schizophrenic, promiscuous, fearless and almost certainly "dangerous" Beauman merely hints at a biological cause, raising titillating, though fully plausible, possibilities. This lushly imagined sequel, which cleverly reproduces the cadences of du Maurier's prose, resurrects Manderley without sweeping away all the artful old cobwebs. Readers should pounce. Agent, Peter Matson. 15-city NPR campaign. (Oct. 2)Forecast: While Rebecca may not be familiar to younger readers (though the 1940 Hitchcock film starring Laurence Olivier is a classic), Beauman's seductive sequel should do well on its own and also prompt interest in the original, which is being reissued in mass market.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In his third outing (after Irresistible and The Broken Hearts Club), New York police detective Conrad Voort has drinks with his old boyhood friend, Meechum Keef, who asks him to check into a group of people. He gives no explanation, nor does he tell Voort where the people are to be found. After some investigation, Voort finds that several of these people have died accidentally. Then Keef himself goes missing. The people on the list, he realizes, have all been involved in some antigovernment activities, but this is the only thread that binds them together. Because Voort comes from a wealthy, influential family, he is able to gain access to many Washington, DC, records, which provide important information leading to an explanation. Black, the pseudonym for a best-selling New York journalist, has created a complex plot equal to his previous page-turners. From next to nothing, the detectives compile a complete picture of the group on the list and those who are hunting them. Except for Voort's annoying tendency to go to bed with beautiful victims, Black writes nearly perfect thrillers. For all public libraries.Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights-University Heights P.L., OH
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (October 2, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066211085
• ISBN-13: 978-0066211084
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,903,349 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Out-of-focus Rebecca---Villain or Victim?, December 11, 2001

By 

Diana F. Von Behren "reneofc" (Kenner, LA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rebecca's Tale: A Novel (Hardcover)

Ever since I read Du Maurier's "Rebecca" as a young girl, I fantasized about the vivid character of Rebecca, who never makes a physical appearance throughout the whole story, yet manages to drive the action of all the players. Having glimpsed her essence, I wondered about her motivation--her real motivation--not the prejudiced opinions gleaned from the other characters. What had brought this glamorous female graced with "brains, beauty and breeding" to her less than glorious end at the murdering hand of her own supposedly smitten husband? How had her childhood injected her with the concentrated need to be mistress of Manderley?
If you are expecting all the answers from Sally Beauman's novel, "Rebecca's Tale", look elsewhere. Rather than a straight-forward account of Rebecca's story in Rebecca's voice, we get instead---in an attempt by the author to utilize Du Maurier's masterful yet underhanded heresay approach to uncovering Manderley's secrets, another go at more opinions--and these from two characters who were not even in Du Maurier's classic and do little to elicit sympathy or interest from the reader. Divided into four sections (each narrated by a different voice), the plot centers around the appearance of Terence Grey to the Manderley district. For very personal reasons, Grey is stirring up the old scandal/drama of the first book in order to seek some thread of the elusive Rebecca. Chief on his list of interviewees is Colonel Julyan, now a man in his 70s and his daughter, Ellie. Paramount to Grey's scheme to weed out the truth is the delivery of an old notebook seemingly written in Rebecca's own hand.
So, Rebecca does indeed get to speak, but through a diary written towards the end of her life to her unborn child. Even the information found here is questionable as Rebecca is touted as liar and performer who will say what she will to get what she wants. The "why" is still seeped in mystery and Rebecca sadly remains a shadowy image like film that has not quite been developed.
Ultimately, this lack of substance disappoints even though for the most part the story itself could be compelling if it left out the annoying angst of Ellie's feminism, Julyan's guilt and Grey's inability to be true to himself. Such "modern" "politically correct" dilemmas, have no place in a period piece set in the early 50s. Yes, all the "live" players' issues are resolved, but these events, while tying up the plot's loose ends again do not quite work within the context of discovering the real Rebecca.
On the positive side, Beauman does a wonderful job of weaving her rather labyrinthine tale with the use of the four distinct voices. Her tone works well in conveying the misty Cornwall coast as it carries with it that unsure quality that Du Maurier adopted initially while allowing the young and inexperienced second Mrs. De Winter to meander through her daydreams while dealing with the testy events of her story. Also interesting is the premise of Rebecca's childhood as related through the journal, even though again this is not developed to its full potential, but rather takes the easy way out by remaining slightly elusive. The appearance at the end of the second Mrs. DeWinter seemed too convenient; her characterization was silly--after living through the events of all three Manderley related tales (yes, the plot and outcome of Susan Hill's "Mrs. De Winter" is also incorporated into this story)there is no way this woman could remain so gauche.
As the Du Maurier estate has sanctioned this book as a sequel, I recommend reading it to all of you who hold "Rebecca" dear as one of the great Gothic masterpieces of the 20th century. Who knows, maybe the next one will have all the definitive answer!

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars You can't go home again, December 20, 2001

By 

love to read (Fresno, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rebecca's Tale: A Novel (Hardcover)

Like everyone else who's ever read it, I've been haunted by Daphne Du Maurier's 'Rebecca'. I read the early reviews of 'Rebecca's Tale' and knew I was taking a chance, but I figured what the heck. Early into 'Rebecca's Tale', I was captivated and couldn't put it down. It seemed a marvelous twist on the original. Then--what can I say?--new age sensiblities started raising their ugly heads and the whole thing desolved into a feminist rant. Sally Beauman's portrayal of Rebecca is particularly strange. This woman/child in no way matches the original Rebecca, who--even though dead before the story takes place--is still a powerful character. Beauman's rendition of the second Mrs. De Winter is even worse. She turns her into cardboard. It seems to me that the further Beauman got into her book, the less it had to do with the original, and the more it became a polemic on coming out of the closet. The main message was 'don't let a man tie you down!' That said, I still gave it two stars because Beauman's prose is quite evocative of Du Maurier's and the first section by 'Colonel Julyan' is superb.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I wasted an entire Saturday for this??!, September 21, 2002

By 

Kathryn P Michaels (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rebecca's Tale (Mass Market Paperback)

What a disappointing read! Since I first read Rebecca, I've been fascinated by Manderley and the de Winters. I was even somewhat satisfied when I read Mrs. de Winter by Susan Hill. When I discovered this book, I was thrilled to read about what happened next. From the beginning, though, I had trouble getting into Rebecca's Tale.

One of the biggest problems for me throughout the book was trudging through the pages and pages of family history. I found myself skimming through long, drawn-out histories that failed to add anything to the story of Rebecca. Finding out about her lineage did not help me to see her as a real person. Besides that, there were too many dead-ends in this story; we are led to believe one thing, but then it all changes. While I enjoy reading novels that keep me guessing, this one just seemed to change course for the sake of changing course.

In addition, the unbelievable depiction of Mrs. Danvers (that reminded me of the witches in Macbeth), the superficial tossing aside of the second Mrs. de Winter as a frumpy, delusional ..., and the sympathetic portrayal of Rebecca all added to my distaste. The only likeable characters in the book were Ellie and Tom, but even that changed as I came to the end of the novel.

The biggest disappointment of all came at the end; in fact, I was so disgusted that I threw the book across the room. Sally Beauman did nothing to maintain the romantic element in the ending of her novel that I loved in du Maurier's book.

Had the ending of the book been more satisfying, I would have been able to overlook the other problems with it. Unfortunately, I would not recommend this book to fans of Rebecca. I think the story of Manderely and Rebecca that I have conjured up in my mind is far superior to the story that Sally Beauman developed.