Rebecca's Tale By Sally Beauman HarperCollins, 438 pages, $35
Face it: Characters named Rebecca get a bad rap. From the Old Testament conniver to Thackery's manipulative Ms. Sharp, there's something a little suspect about those Rebeccas. Sure, Ivanhoe was nursed back to life by one seductively exotic Rebecca, but then he did have to cross lances with that hulking Templar, Bois-Guilbert, because of her. And when they aren't ruthless plotters, they're sugary sweet infants, such as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm or Becky Thatcher in Tom Sawyer. It's enough to inspire anyone with the same name to start an anti-defamation league.
And of course, the Rebecca in literature who immediately comes to mind is that ferocious creation of Daphne Du Maurier. Her 1938 book, portraying a heartless socialite who terribly abused her husband, Maxim De Winter, had several scandalous affairs and eventually drowned in mysterious circumstances, captivated the public imagination and was adapted into plays and films, notably Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 classic. Last year, Rebecca won the Anthony Award for the best book of the century, a prestigious accolade in mystery circles.
Perhaps its regard is a little unusual, as Rebecca'sthin plot reeks of the type of page-turning mystery romances best read on subways -- fragile, penniless woman snags rich aristocrat, only to have happily-ever-after descend into madness and exile. But it is delightfully literate trash: a gothic fairy tale with ghosts and mystery interwoven with lush nature and vivid dream imagery. Even better was the power of the title character, who, even though she had been dead a year in the novel's time, dominated every page of the novel.
And Rebecca apparently captivated British author Sally Beauman, too. An established writer of nonfiction and fiction (a history of the Royal Shakespeare Company as well as the bestselling romance Destiny),Beauman's created a sequel, Rebecca's Tale, claiming to reveal the untold story of her life and the circumstances around her death. But however promising, in a sort of airport-book-buying way, Beauman's book is a disappointment. Perhaps in homage to Du Maurier, Beauman has written an updated fiction of popular Gothic romance, but this tribute is also its downfall -- instead of the well-crafted anguish and quiet terror of the original, we get a book whose attempts at lurid sensationalism misfire with their predictability.
Rebecca's Tale starts as a quest for the redemption of guilt. Colonel Arthur Julyan, a friend and neighbour of Maxim De Winter's, also presided over the inquest looking into Rebecca's death and absolved her husband of any wrongdoing. Now it's 1951; 20 years have passed and, nearing the end of his life, the good colonel is determined to re-examine the facts. Since the narrative point of view shifts three times in the novel, we also hear from a mysterious stranger, Terence Gray, who may be bound to Rebecca by more than simple fascination in local gossip, as well as an account from Julyan's daughter, Ellie.
For Rebeccaphiles, probably the most anticipated part of the novel is Rebecca's own explanation of events. Sadly, the only chance to hear her story in her own voice is filtered through a copy of her diary, written in a mawkish first-person narrative addressed to her future child.
The four narratives greatly inhibit any real character development, and as a result we're left with pedantic caricatures: Julyan is a fusty, ailing retiree; Gray is a dull academic struggling to learn about his past, who seems attracted to the milksop Ellie, if only because she self-effacingly put her life on hold to nurse her father.
Of course, it's Rebecca we're interested in, and we gradually glean that she had some astonishing connections with the De Winter family and estate, was forced to live in noble poverty with her single mother while travelling in a theatre troupe, and weathered the sexual come-ons of men at a very early age. Her story is identical to a talk-show confessional, and the book generates the same sort of distaste in the reader as in the TV viewer, minus the schadenfreude. At least the misfits who appear on these shows volunteered to be there.
Even everyone's favourite hired help, the creepy Mrs. Danvers, becomes a cartoon. While her dedication to her mistress in Du Maurier was deliciously chilling -- keeping Rebecca's room as a shrine, nightly laying out her toilette -- Mrs. Danvers appears as a "ghost" in Beauman, disturbing her neighbours by weirdly moving around furniture late at night. Her hypnotic power to astonish is seriously deflated.
There are some funny insights: Beauman picks up on the mousiness of the second Mrs. De Winter and continues the character's relative anonymity in the story. How fitting that after De Winter's death, she'd "walled herself up in Toronto (or was it Montreal?)." But the author also mixes in some jaw-droppingly ridiculous anachronisms that conflict with the earnest tone, including epigraphs quoting Sylvia Plath and Czeslaw Milosz. The book is too precise and slow to appeal to the Jerry Springer crowd, and too distasteful to entice more literate readers.
After reading Rebecca's Tale, you too will dream of going to Manderley yet again. And finally demanding justice for Rebecca. Globe and Mail copy editor Rebecca Caldwell is still called Becky by her mother.