Rebecca's Tale

HarperTorch, 2002. Very Good+. Published more than 60 years ago, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca still captiva tes, at least partly because of its insistent ambiguity: we never learn def initively whether Maxim de Winter murdered his stunning first wife, Rebecca , or why Maxim so hastily remarried a mousy younger woman, famously unnamed . Selected by the du Maurier estate, Beauman (Destiny) has written a "compa nion" to Rebecca that preserves, and even deepens, the earlier novel's craf ty evasions. Set in 1951, two decades after Rebecca's death was ruled a sui cide, Beauman's story opens with the same (now famous) sentence as the earl ier book: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." Elderly, ailing Colonel Arthur Julyan was magistrate in the district when the legendary de Winter mansion mysteriously burned to the ground. Julyan's last days are di sturbed by the intrusive visits of Terence Gray, a Scottish academic who cl aims to be writing a book about Rebecca's death. Then both Julyan's sharp d aughter Ellie and Gray, who has secrets of his own, become rattled when Reb ecca's personal effects begin arriving at the Julyan home. One of the anony mously sent packages contains Rebecca's journal, written just before her de ath a possible Rosetta stone. Beauman expertly tells Rebecca's tale from fo ur different perspectives Julyan's, Gray's, Ellie's and, most vividly, Rebe cca's without settling which version is nearest the truth. Though a composi te Rebecca emerges depressive, possibly schizophrenic, promiscuous, fearles s and almost certainly "dangerous" Beauman merely hints at a biological cau se, raising titillating, though fully plausible, possibilities. This lushly.