Rebecca's Tale (2001)

I must start this account with a personal rant - I have just written a complete review, and when I clicked on save Librarything just swallowed it without a trace. Right now, I would like to murder someone.

Back to "Rebecca's Tale", a variation upon Daphne Du Maurier's classical "Rebecca" that according to the back cover has recieved much critical acclaim.

The story is told by four narrators: First comes Colonel Julyan, who has long been in love with Rebecca without admitting the fact to himself and in consequence is obsessed with her life and death. Next, Terence Grey, a historian temporarily working near Manderley who seems intent on researching Rebecca for his own very personal reasons. Third narrator is Rebecca herself, who writes a diary when she believes herself to be pregnant and decides to tell her life story to her unborn child. And last comes Ellie, Colonel Julyan's daughter, who wraps up the different story lines.

Let me come to the good points first: the four narrators complement each other cleverly, each new story propels the narrative forward. There are a lot of interesting story elements in Rebecca's slowly revealed back story, and especially her own part as told in the diary felt fresh and authentic.

But on the whole I was deeply dissatisfied. I'm never a fan of placing unsubtle hints that nothing is as it seems, and here it was done really heavy-handed. "Did I have a sense of foreboding then?" - oh well... It's not that I don't like a mystery, but must the clues be presented so mechanisticly? And most story developments were pretty obvious anyway, so I guessed them quite some time ahead.

Another point of my dislike is that though the elements of Rebecca's life and background are revealed slowly, the reader is rarely allowed to come to his own conclusions about characters or events, Ms Beauman is always pointing them out for us. And these elements in themselves felt worn out, they have been used in such a lot of other stories about gender-inequality in the 20th century I have read.

Yet I could probably have enjoyed this book as good entertainment if I weren't forced by it's chosen subject to compare it constantly with Daphne Du Maurier's book - which is simply way better. It's ambiguous, demanding, multi-layered and very well written. It's a book that keeps me thinking after reading. Compared to that, "Rebecca's Tale" is superficial and run-of-the-mill ( )

A complicated read but excellent writing. The story is a little dry in the beginning as the author fills us in on the original story of Rebecca. The story begins to take off and soon the reader is determined to follow all the threads with the characters who are searching for the answer to Rebecca's death in the first novel. Very well written and quite well done! ( )

I had read the original "Rebecca" many years ago, and thought about rereading it before I read this, but decided I could reread it later if I needed to. I still might do that, but Ms Beauman very kindly filled me in on enough so that I could easily remember what the old story told. This time, the Rebecca's story was told through the eyes of 4 different people, some that lived it then and all that were recipients of the aftermath of her death all those years ago.

I never read Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, but have watched the movie and loved the story. I think this author did a great job. The story read like a classic old novel full of dark secrets and mysteries. A woman, newly married, must learn to how to run her husband's estate, but there are those who may not want her there. Great story! ( )

Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca is one of my favourite books, so I was curious to see how Beauman envisiged what happened next and cleared up the unexplained of the original novel.

The main problem with this book is that it was not written by Du Maurier, so we are still no closer to finding out the truth behind the original (perhaps its mystery was its charm?)

However, it is an interesting book and worth a read by any Rebecca fan. ( )