Examine Rebeccas Tale: Rebeccas Tale Penned By Sally Beauman Presented In Ebook

never thought I would need a novel so proRebecca, but I really did.
After rereading Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, I was surprised by how my perspective had changed and I no longer sympathised with our nameless main character and instead was much more intrigued by the character of Rebecca.
I knew it was my time to face this novel and delve into more of her story.

I'm aware that this is technically fanfiction, but I see nothing wrong with that! Yes, Beauman's interpretation and character development is not canon.
I see it as more of an exploration and an explanation, Du Maurier leaves us on such a cliff hanger in 'Rebecca' and leaves us with the biased perspective of our unnamed protagonist.
The character of Rebecca is constantly villainised, and Beauman gives the reader a chance to see a number of different perspectives so we can form our own opinions.

First of all, the story is so well written, I could have believed I was reading a sequel by Du Maurier herself.
My only criticism is there was quite a lot of waffling on and the story didn't really need to be as long as it was, nevertheless, I enjoyed the ride.
Each perspective got stronger as the novel progressed, I thought we hit the peak when we were able to read from Rebecca's perspective but I found Ellie's far more enjoyable and I loved her character so much.
The story had a great atmosphere, and I thoroughly enjoyed the more tense and spooky parts.
Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. My word this was a hard slog,

I found it one of those books that doesn't really pick up pace at all, it meanders on for hours and hours and hours until you find it's finished and you haven't clue what happened.


A wonderful description of country life in the post war period but still not enough to keep me enthralled at all.
Audiobook. This review is totally based upon the fact that Sally Beauman took a wonderful story, the original sitelinkRebecca and turned it all around so it's almost unrecognizable.
Rebecca is a sympathetic, misunderstood character that really hadn't been maneuvering people's lives for her own enjoyment and their pain.
Max is a character who just doesn't understand Rebecca and is portrayed as a villain who ultimately committed suicide by car because he couldn't live without Rebecca.
Thend Mrs. DeWinter is a mousy, boring, petty woman who couldn't keep Max's interest and their marriage ended up being a bad one.
Even Mrs. Danvers ends up alive. WHAT!!!!!!!

I can see maybe writing a book about Rebecca that shows how she became such a manipulative, horrible person.
Start her out innocent and then go from there, But to change everyone in the story around so much It's like the author didn't enjoy the first book at all and thought she could improve upon it by changing the fundamental parts of the original book.
Maybe she should have just written her own story with characters that had nothing to so with sitelinkRebecca at all.
Perhaps then this book wouldn't have been so bad, The writing itself is okay, the journal entries by Rebecca are the best part, But overall Ugh! More like,, but rounded up I'm feeling generous today,

I love the premise, amp the writing was good I'm certainly willing to try Beauman's fiction again.
But overall, meh. For one thing, it's way too long there's a high ratio of nothing happening compared to the page count.
The other problem is that Gray amp Ellie's sections roughly half said page count are boring as sin.
Their narratives simply screamed "overwritten litfic" amp brought very little to the Rebecca story, If the narrative divides had focused on, say, Julyan Rebecca's diary a nowsenile Mrs Danvers, that would have made for a more tightly woven continuation.
But Gray amp Ellie don't feel connected to Rebecca's saga, despite Beauman pushing, shoving, amp stretching to fit their own rather paltry, IMO problems into the scope of the original.
It's a textbook example of Trying Too Hardtm,

That said, I did enjoy grumpy ol' Julyan's section, amp Rebecca's diary was interesting even if too heavyhanded in the blatant feminist revisionary mode.


I've read worse, but it could've been so much better, The daughter of a minor character from Daphne du Mauriers Rebecca joins forces with a journalist with a hidden motive to discover The Truth behind the mysterious Rebecca.
Now, Im not averse to “continuations” of novels, but this book commits the literary sacrilege of altering the essential nature of the characters in du Mauriers story.
And as if thats not bad enough, were asked to believe that a woman is going to be delighted when the man shes in love with confesses hes gay And in thes! Sure, that reaction rings true.
Unfortunately, the preposterous aspects of the book overshadow what could be an okay mystery, Rebecca was a wonderfully, haunting gothic tale, Rebecca's tale is not. It's not even a decent detective story, Rebecca is a vivid character, a character that colours the lives of everyone in the original work, you are left to wonder at her.
She is accomplished, beautiful and everyone desires her, yet, . It is made clear in the original story that she is manipulative, a liar and she had numerous affairs confirmed by Flavell and Danvers.


However, Miss Beauman decides that clearly Rebecca is a modern heroine who must be praised for cuckolding her husband.
After all she was being emotionally oppressed by the man apparently so everything her character does is justified.
It is a very modern approach to the character and pushed so throroughly that we have to hate the timid original narrator.
Indeed when Mrs De Winter appears, she does not seem to have aged, in fact, she seems as

dreamy and timid as from the first book.


Rebecca's Tale does not give us a true picture of Rebecca, it gives us a rosy, sympathetic view.
She is portrayed as this ultimate feminist, obviously wonderful because she doesn't settle into a 'wifely' role and perfectly entitled to cheat on her husband, because he doesn't stoke her fire enough.
Rebecca in the original is ambivalent, she's a strong woman, yet deceitful accomplished yet her likeability is a façade, she is a bright star that burns.
Her truth can be seen through many of the characters in Rebecca, not just Max, Mrs Danvers confirms that she hates the men in her life and that she slept around, that Maxim was tricked into marriage.
Yes Rebecca is a vivid character, yet this obsession to turn her into a modern heroine who is railing against traditional constraints is terrible and doesn't work.


Maxim is also terribly dealt with, once again, the depths of the character are ignored and Miss Beauman focuses on the 'evilness' of being a man unwilling to endure scandal.
Maxim always struck me as a troubled character, one driven to the ultimate act of revenge, struck by guilt and his attention to duty.
Yet Max De Winter is ignobly killed off,

I found Rebecca's tale unsatisfying as it seemed determined to push modern attitudes on the main characters and ignoring the many facets of the original cast.
There was a determination to push Rebecca as a victim of terrible men and really, there was more to the character than that.
Terrible.

Someone please remind me to stop reading fanfiction of classics, :

It kills me to even have to give itstar, Rebecca's Tale by Sally Beauman is setyears after Rebecca's death and the burning of Manderley.
It follows the search of Terence Gray for the real Rebecca and the answer to what really happened to her.
There is also the small matter of packages with reminders of Rebecca which have been mailed to the family's friend Colonel Julyan and her cousin Jack Favell.
Notebooks and mementos that stir up memories,

I have mixed feelings about this book, Standing on its own merits, it is a terrific investigation of truth and point of view.
Beauman uses several points of view to tell her storyColonel Julyan, Terence Gray, Rebecca herself through the notebooks and finally Ellie Julyan, the colonel's daughter.
With every shift of narrator, she drives home the notion that Gray thinks about early in the book:

"I'm never likely to discover the truth about Rebeccaand what is the truth, anyway Not a fixed thing, in my experiencenever a fixed thing.
The truth fluctuate, it shifts look at it from this window and it takes one shape look at it from another, and it's altered.
"

This is true as we follow the different narrators, Colonel Julyan gives us one version of his initial meetings with Terence Gray Gray gives us a slightly different version.
Not that either of the men is lying but each conceals certain facts or views them with their different prejudices and preconceived notions.
Even when Gray begins interviewing those who still remain from the days when Rebecca lived and died at Manderley, we are shown different versions of the same story.
What exactly is the truth And even Jack Favell begins to doubt what he thought he knew about the past.
He says:

"Strange, isn't it You start talking about the past, and you think you've understood it, and then you suddenly see: Maybe it wasn't the way you thought at the time, maybe there's a different explanation.
"

I started reading this thinking that all would be explained, I found that wasn't true at all, The reader is still left with doubts, Whose voice should we trust Can we even trust what Rebecca wrote in her notebooks There is reason to think that we shouldn't.
And, now, having finished the book, I think that this is as it should be, I would hate for all the loose ends that were left dangling in such a tantalizing manner in Rebecca would suddenly be cleared up.


That brings me to my misgivings about the book, As a sequel to Rebecca, I'm not at all sure that I'm satisfied I rarely am with sequels by other authors or remakes.
I don't buy Colonel Julyan for one thing, . . his characterization doesn't quite ring true with me, The only voice that does ring the least bit true is Rebecca's, . . and I don't quite trust that she's told the truth, Of course, given what we're told about her in du Maurier's story, . . that characterization is spot on, We're not supposed to trust Rebecca, And, of course, this book does not have the same gothic feel to it, I miss the shadow and eeriness of the du Maurier classic, Three out five mostly for Beauman's skill with point of view and exploring how trustworthy that is,


This review was first posted on my blog sitelinkMy Reader's Block, Please request permission before reposting any portion, Thanks. La colpa è anche un po' mia: appena vedo qualcosa che ha minimamente a che fare con Rebecca o con la Du Maurier non posso resistere.


Il romanzo sarebbe anche ben scritto, ma per me nulla può competere,
Nulla si può aggiungere,

Non toccatemi Rebecca!,