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When I was in 10th grade, my favorite novels were GONE WITH THE WIND, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, and REBECCA. I was a romantic, lonely girl, and to be engulfed in passion, in place --- to be abducted --- was what I wanted out of a book. (It didn't hurt that two of the three had been made into films starring Laurence Olivier, my teenage heartthrob; Clark Gable was no slouch, either.) Of course, I longed for sequels, even though sequels are, inevitably, disappointing.
REBECCA'S TALE doesn't have the allure of the original; how could it? Its only raison d'être is the brooding, gothic mystery set in motion by Daphne du Maurier in her 1938 novel --- the sequel takes place in 1951, two decades later --- and its mandate is not to break new ground (although it does briefly cross the Channel) but to undertake a thorough spading and replanting of territory we already know. Or do we? In case the story has temporarily slipped your mind, a REBECCA refresher course: Maxim de Winter, proud scion of an old English family and possessor of a very stately home, Manderley, marries a young woman he meets in Monte Carlo while (apparently) on the rebound from the tragic death of his first wife, the dazzling Rebecca. His second wife --- the intriguingly nameless narrator of the story, she is referred to only as "Mrs. de Winter" --- suffers the tortures of the damned trying to live up to her predecessor. However, when new evidence suggests that Rebecca's death was not a boating accident, as originally assumed, but murder, perhaps committed by Maxim, wife number two shows true grit, and Rebecca herself is unmasked as a gorgeous predator. If the second wife in REBECCA felt overshadowed by the ghost of the first, so Sally Beauman must have found her work haunted by du Maurier's hugely popular, highly atmospheric book. It's hard enough to write a decent novel without laboring under that kind of handicap.
But Beauman is nothing if not bold. She even begins REBECCA'S TALE with REBECCA's mesmerizing first sentence: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." Here, however, the words belong to the aged Colonel Julyan who, as a local magistrate, was crucially involved in the investigation of Rebecca's death. He is the first of four narrators, each delving into the puzzles of the past --- who was Rebecca, really, and how did she die? --- and their implications for the present. Julyan is followed by Terence Gray, a young scholar pursuing his own connection to the de Winters; next comes the text of a journal written by Rebecca herself; the concluding section belongs to Julyan's daughter, Ellie, an observant, thwarted young woman. Less of a romance than REBECCA, more of a mystery, this book is largely plot-driven, and I don't want to spoil the suspense by spilling the beans. Suffice it to say that, in REBECCA'S TALE, the first Mrs. de Winter is not the heartless person she appeared to be in REBECCA.
I can't help feeling that in beginning with men's voices, Beauman may have committed a tactical error, for the first two sections never quite come alive; they feel more like an intelligent reconstruction than an imaginative leap. Much of the seductiveness of the original lay in the reader's immediate identification with its gauche, badly dressed, fantasy-prone, excruciatingly sensitive heroine. (No wonder I worshiped this book --- the continual comparisons between the narrator's awkwardness and her predecessor's savoir faire must have struck a loud chord with an insecure teenager doomed never to be one of the "popular" girls.) Although Beauman is a pretty good writer, she doesn't find a narrative voice with anything like the same force until she gets to Rebecca's own tale, 250 pages into the book. Here, the language heats up substantially; one senses that Beauman feels a certain zeal about rescuing Rebecca from du Maurier's cryptic and none too flattering portrayal.
Ellie's section, while not so highly charged, is effective, too. Struggling for both love and autonomy, she becomes a kind of proto-feminist figure; and toward the end of REBECCA'S TALE she makes plain what she thinks of meek, dependent types like the second Mrs. de Winter: "If this was where love led a woman, I feared it. I no longer wanted to listen to the second wife, it was the first wife's voice I needed now…"
That, in a nutshell, is REBECCA'S TALE. Do not think, however, that Beauman, with her revisionism, is obliterating the Manderley we know and love. One of the charms of a sequel, after all, is its familiarity. We already know whom to be afraid of (Mrs. Danvers, of course) and whom to revile (Jack Favell). There's an obnoxious busybody who closely resembles the grotesque Mrs. Van Hopper, a faithful dog reminiscent of Jasper, a no-nonsense aunt with a bit of Maxim's sister, Beatrice, about her. I did wish that there weren't quite so many echoes; like the people who stamp genuine leather inside a belt lest anyone suspect it's plastic, Beauman seems to have used these du Maurier-ish touches to confer extra added authenticity. I think her book is quite credible without them.
Really dedicated REBECCA-philes may sniff at sequels --- at least two others have been attempted --- but I urge them to give this well-crafted, absorbing novel a chance. For what is more intriguing than to hear the other side of a story we know, to relive significant events from a different point of view, to get closer to what really happened, and why? In REBECCA, du Maurier created a fiction so powerful that it is tempting to take sides --- the first vs. the second Mrs. de Winter --- and it's sometimes hard to remember that this is invention, not fact.
And don't be surprised if, once you've finished REBECCA'S TALE, you feel a sudden urge to dust off your old copy of REBECCA. I'm in the midst of rereading mine right now, and I'm up to the night of the costume ball, so if you'll excuse me...
--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman
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