Mrs. De Winter

From the very first moment of Rebecca (“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again”), readers were immersed in the claustrophobic world of Maxim de Winter, his innocent child bride, and the memory of the malevolent beauty, Rebecca. At the end of Rebecca, Manderley is burning and Maxim and Mrs. de Winter are on their way to the Continent to try to build a quiet, safe life for themselves away from the passionate, violent excesses that nearly destroyed their souls. But could this be possible? Could the de Winters escape or did they ever return home to England to confront the past? What, for that matter, happened to the despicable housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, and Rebecca’s creepy cousin, Jack Favell? Susan Hill, a distinguished novelist writing at the top of her form, has imagined brilliantly, and wholly convincingly, precisely what happens after the de Winters journey back to England. Daphne du Maurier would approve; so too will innumerable readers of Rebecca, and the huge number of people who appreciate the joining of a great novelist to a wonderful story. The original Rebecca is in many ways the first and finest example of the romantic suspense-thriller. A gigantic best-seller when first published more than fifty years ago, it was also the basis of the Alfred Hitchcock movie starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1940.