- Hardcover: 280 pages
- Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers; New edition edition (Aug 30 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0897334779
- ISBN-13: 978-0897334778
- Product Dimensions: 22.4 x 14.8 x 2.7 cm
- Shipping Weight: 481 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,799,718 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Freely lends humor, insight and a wry postfeminist twist to Daphne du Maurier's melodrama of love, obsession and jealousy in this cleverly evocative, modern-day riff on the 1938 classic. The wealthy Maxim de Winter has become Max Midwinter, a minor poet and independent publisher dwarfed by the greater success of his wife, Rebecca, and by her posthumously published revenge novel, The Marriage Hearse, an indictment of Max and his calculating relatives who, she claims, drove her to suicide. In Rebecca's narrative, he's been transformed in the eyes of readers everywhere from breezy playboy to boozing, criminally misogynist monster, and his personal life has been under public scrutiny ever since. The second Mrs. Midwinter, a literary aspirant with one slim volume of short fiction to her credit, has long been a fan of Rebecca's poetry, which she can quote endlessly, but she does not recognize the portrait in The Marriage Hearse until she's already fallen for Max and has entered into the life Rebecca described with such accurate vitriol. In the house (changed from Manderley to Beckfield), she writes in Rebecca's study, sleeps in her bed and raises her children, all the time hearing her warnings from beyond the grave. Only slightly more assertive than her du Maurier model by virtue of her 1960s coming-of-age, she is manipulated by Rebecca's agents, among them Danny (Danvers), who is no longer just the housekeeper but Rebecca's self-appointed literary executor as well; and by Aunt Bea, whose motives are just one of the many mysteries that gradually unfold. Even those unfamiliar with the original will enjoy Freely's (Mother's Helper) sharply drawn, socially updated and suspenseful version of the male-female battle. (Feb.) FYI: The Other Rebecca was published by Bloomsbury in England in 1996.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In the first U.S. publication of a novel released in Britain in 1996, Freely gleefully traps her ingenuous heroine (a writer) in a mysterious romance that recalls Daphne Du Maurier's classic story, as reflected in the title. Freely thrusts her protagonist into a whirlwind romance with the mysterious and successful Max Midwinter, previously married to famous poet Rebecca, author of "The Marriage Hearse," who died under mysterious circumstances. The innocent storyteller commits at least as many gaffes, though different and updated, as Du Marier's heroine, and the climax to the tale is similar: Max is under suspicion for the murder of his former wife, whose body was never found. This beautifully structured and entertaining read forfeits no originality, patterned though it is after its classic namesake. Freely's work will be enjoyed in all libraries but especially in academic ones, where its witty literary allusions might all be appreciated.
-Margaret A. Smith, Grace A. Dow Memorial Lib., Midland, MI
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
-Margaret A. Smith, Grace A. Dow Memorial Lib., Midland, MI
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic,
By A Customer
This review is from: Other Rebecca The (Hardcover)
this is a great book, i would really recommend it!
3.0 out of 5 stars
strange different, saddening and gross, but spell binding!,
This review is from: Other Rebecca The (Hardcover)
I knew it would be a strange book after the first chapter which is more of an intro, the "Other Rebecca" leads into a story explaing in an errie sort of way that she fell in love with a man, only to find herself in a book written by another woman. This other woman, the first Rebecca has a way of making her death a living truth in everyone's heart -- even in her new husbands wife. Get ready for a twisting, turning, plot full of questions waiting to be answered...
4.0 out of 5 stars
Atmospheric and witty,
By
This review is from: Other Rebecca The (Hardcover)
Maureen Freely's 20th century retelling of Daphne DuMaurier's "Rebecca" updates the 1938 classic with plenty of sex, drugs and cutthroat literary feuding while managing to retain the claustrophobic pathos of the original.The American narrator of "The Other Rebecca" has just finished her first book of stories and is having difficulty beginning a novel when she meets and falls for Max Midwinter, dashing British poet and brooding widower of the sharp and talented Rebecca, whose posthumous autobiographical novel viciously skewered her in-laws and husband. The Midwinter family latches onto Max's new wife, a timid thing easily swayed and subsumed by the capable and meddlesome Aunt Bea, the fanatical Danny who worships Rebecca's memory and the two mistrustful children. A new biography linking Max to Rebecca's death plunges him into depression and alcohol, alienating him from his new wife whose ineffectual attempts to help backfire with unerring devastation. Freely's narrative echoes DuMaurier's with a modern day wryness, wit and black-humored feminism.
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