Readers Group Diary June

'The dead, the damnable and the downright unreliable'

A readers group review of Rebecca's Tale by Sally Beauman

About us
We're a fairly new group (we started up in February this year) and we meet at South Hill Park Arts Centre in Bracknell, Berkshire once a month. The fact that we're still fairly new to one another does have some bearing on our discussions - but we're a lively and somewhat vocal group! We always manage to put our point of view across and it's becoming evident that we can all love or hate the same thing in any given book. We're a diverse collection of individuals with one thing in common - a love of creative writing. Given our busy lives, we tend to concentrate on mid length novels available in paperback - but recently we read Rebecca's Tale by Sally Beauman. Here's what we thought: -

The story
The premise of the book is fairly simple - it's 1951 and the 20th anniversary of the death of Rebecca de Winter. Certain characters from the original novel Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier are revisited, whilst someone (unknown for much of the book) resurrects the memory of Rebecca by sending various personal artefacts - a ring, a brooch and a notebook - to people Rebecca had been close to in her short life. Not that her memory needs resurrecting as they all seem to have been living with constant reminders of her for the past 20 years.

The book
As said, the premise of the book is fairly simple - take a classic novel and fill in the gaps. But do we really want, or need, the gaps to be filled in? With a vague knowledge of the novel, my recollection is that the gaps are as good as the content - and should be left the way they were intended by du Maurier. In Beauman's novel the gothic brooding atmosphere of the du Maurier book is replaced by the post war austerity and manners of England in the early 1950's.

A small amount of internet research reveals that Rececca's Tale is not an accidental idea. The du Maurier web site (http://www.dumaurier.org) would have us believe that the idea came from a conversation over dinner between Sally Beauman and Christian Browning (du Maurier's son). However, the web site also claims Rebecca's tale to be a 'daring and brilliant novel' that is having 'a huge impact across the world'.

This is a book that treats as 'truth' the 'facts' of another novel. And it refers to 'events' - over a twenty-year time frame - arising from the first novel as if they were 'truth' even though they are never mentioned in the first novel. To say there are multiple levels of fiction would be an understatement!

As Daphne du Maurier isn't just a writer - she's a literary institution with a festival of arts and literature, writers' awards and literary prizes in her name - Little, Brown and company have even gone to the trouble of creating a web site just about the book. Please see http://www.rebeccas-tale.co.uk for more details.

That 'other' book
A major concern that people might have is feeling the need to read du Maurier's compelling and dramatic - but barely realist - original novel Rebecca, first, in order to understand this 'sequel'. In our reading group, members had either read it many years ago or had a vague appreciation of the storyline based on the Hitchcock film. It was felt that background knowledge wasn't really necessary in order to enjoy the Beauman version as it pretty much stands up in its own right. In fact Beauman's circumnavigating style gives you a lot of the details you need along the way.

The characters
The bulk of the book is a narration in the first person by three of the main characters. They each describe the events of April and May 1951 (via many detours into the past) and they each have a very different viewpoint and experience of these events.

Arthur Julyan - misogynist at large. An ex-Army colonel, Julyan was Maxim de Winter's best friend at the time of Rebecca's death. As local magistrate, Julyan was a key witness at the inquest and is believed to have protected Maxim against a possible murder charge. Julyan has not achieved nearly enough personal growth to be able to understand himself - let alone the women in his life - so the reader knows he's in love with the dead Rebecca. So does his daughter and so did his wife when she was alive. Only he doesn't recognise it himself.

Terence Grey - pathological concealer of the truth. Terence turns into Tom Galbraith halfway through the novel and has the dubious credentials of thinking he might be Rebecca's son. A light-hearted romantic dally with Julyan's daughter precedes his tortuous revelation that he's gay. Terence/Tom is the reason for the book being written in the first place as it is Tom's search for his 'true' identity that prompts the writing of Rebecca's Tale. Tom's quest leads to heartfelt emotion and, ultimately I think, disappointment. A 'mollusc of a man' - according to Ellie.

Ellie Julyan - lifetime doormat. Ellie is described, to her detriment, by both her father and her (attempted!) lover before she introduces herself to the reader. In the eyes of the others she's a carer and a devoted daughter. With her own voice she's a passionate woman who listens to ghosts. Not so much a character in her own right as a useful foil for the other egos. 

The third section is the voice of Rebecca telling her story to her unborn child. This section is also in the first person but it goes back to the events of Rebecca's childhood and early-married life leading up the days before her death. This is the story found in the notebook sent to Julyan and, as such, is the most true part of Rebecca's tale. Although 'true' and 'truth' are fluid terms in the life of Rebecca de Winter. The rest of the book is an exploration of the effect Rebecca's life and death had on almost everyone who knew her.

Themes 'un'contained
Identity
Rebecca's Tale is an unusual book in that it's based, so much, on somebody else's creation. But that is almost a theme in itself throughout the book. People - personalities and characters - are created, and recreate themselves, constantly and throughout.

• Rebecca was Becka - an actress's daughter who becomes the lady of Manderley. '…a veritable Iago … an infant Richard III …a notorious Machiavel … not a bad Puck'. (Not a bad Puck - oh please!)
• Isolda becomes Isabel - part English landed gentry and part French exile
• Terence was Tom - and becomes Tom again when he reveals his true identity
• Ellie is dutiful stay-at-home daughter - but dreams of a Cambridge education and an independent discovery of the world outside the four walls of her father's house
• Nicky was a dutiful husband - but slowly unfurls from his cocoon into a beautiful gay man

Sexuality
Arguably, sexuality is indelibly linked with identity - which is perhaps why Beauman makes such a ham of it. Rebecca's sexuality is questioned several times, but never in any satisfying depth. Beauman seems to have taken note of the current trend for homosexuality to be viewed as 'trendy' and seems fascinated by its possibilities as far as her characters are concerned. Despite this care and attention, however, she only manages to produce a stereotypical gay woman (strident, intelligent, Cambridge-issue, opinionated, mature in years, immersed in books) and a stereotypical gay man (beautiful, blond, long curly hair, nice to everyone, adored by all and sundry).

There are, also, heavy-handed hints - no doubt intended as subtle undertones - of incest and sexual abuse. Descriptions of the relationship between Rebecca and Jack Devlin ('the Devlin father') leave us in little doubt as to its oddity - but never really answer the question 'why'.

I feel Beauman is just dabbling in an area that she should have left well alone, as her maladroit-ness in this area only detracts from the book.

Wimmin's stuff?
Is this merely a woman's book? Was the original Daphne du Maurier edition merely a woman's book? Certainly three out of four of the narrators of this book are either male in actual fact or display male characteristics in the way they live their lives. And yet the book is about a woman's life - and the death of that woman is associated with gynaecologic issues than men never have to face alone. Essentially, this is a woman writing a man's words as he tells the story of a woman. Other readers will have to make their own mind up as to whether this works or not.

Style
This is where the South Hill Park book club members divided into two camps. Shirley found the writing style 'long winded' and 'frustrating' whilst Phyl thought it 'a real page turner with a slick, tightly woven plot'. Janet felt that Beauman had 'captured the style of du Maurier's book with its haunting atmosphere of suspense and mystery' whilst others found it 'conceived and conceited'. Nicky appreciated the 'immediate and intimate style of the writing' and felt that the novel is 'as powerful, atmospheric and unputdownable as du Maurier's original'.

The main exception people took to the style, is the way in which Beauman tries to recreate the sense of foreboding at which du Maurier excelled. Whilst much of the book is built around perceived, conceived (and as such contrived) anticipation, I lost patience with the repetition of phrases such as 'I had no premonition, no sense of what was going to happen next ' and 'but at the time I couldn't have foreseen the circumstances' and 'though I didn't realise that immediately' and 'I had no inkling then of the revelations that were to come today' etc etc etc..

For example, Julyan is delivered a parcel on page 8 of the novel. He admits to not receiving many letters and he admits that the parcel creates a 'thrill of anticipation'. This is why I find it completely unrealistic that Julyan doesn't open the parcel straight away. In fact, he doesn't open the parcel until 45 pages later! In the meantime, the package sits in the readers' mind's eye whilst Julyan relates all manner of other things. Beauman seems to believe, however, that unless heavy-handed techniques are employed, her reader will forget all about it. There are no less than three 'reminders' between page 8 and page 53; no doubt they are intended to be subtle but, being so badly construed, stand out a mile.

The words used also caused me to lose some patience with the writer. I found that use of phrases such as 'exactly similar' reminded me of my own writing as an A level student. I took on the mantle of my own teacher - either things are exactly the same or their similar, you can't have 'exactly similar'!

Equally collegiate, the book is peppered with the results of Beauman seemingly having swallowed a dictionary before sitting down to write. Words such as 'antediluvian', 'nemesis', 'enteric', 'palisade', 'curmudgeon', 'incunabula', 'insuperable', 'anathema', 'apocryphal', 'coda', 'conflate', 'amanuensis' (need I go on?) come across as affected, unnecessary and quite frankly annoying. I couldn't agree more with my book club colleague, Jenny's, advice of the requirement for 'rigorous editing'.

In summary, the South Hill Park Arts Centre book club found Rebecca's Tale to be 'pure escapism' but 'enjoyable as a tale in its own right'.