SOURCE: "Play It Again," in New Statesman and Society, Vol. 6, No. 280, November 26, 1993, pp. 44-5.

In the following review, Hughes laments the specter of "literary ventriloquism" that hangs over Mrs. de Winter, likening its demerits to Emma Tennant's Pemberley, a sequel to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Pemberley [by Emma Tennant] and Mrs de Winter comprise codas to two of English literature's most loved and enduring texts. Thus Pemberley tells the story of what-happened-next to Elizabeth Bennett, Mr Darcy and the rest of the cast of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Mrs de Winter, meanwhile, fast-forwards to a point ten years beyond the end of Daphne de Maurier's Rebecca to discover the fate of Mrs Danvers, Maxim de Winter and, of course, the nameless narrator.

Both texts, significantly, concern the non-appearance of heirs. Elizabeth Bennett has been married a full year, and while her sisters Jane and Lydia have...