SOURCE: "Dreaming of Manderley," in Belles Lettres, Vol. 9, No. 3, Spring, 1994, pp. 23-4.

In the following review, Harris looks into the reasons why Mrs. de Winter fails "to replicate the success of [Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca."]

What happens to a writer who has mined her craft to create a fantasy existence for herself and then finds that her inner conflicts no longer inspire the fiction for which she has become famous? Margaret Forster's new biography of Daphne du Maurier explores the development and decline of a woman who truly "lived to write." In a genre that receives little respect from critics, du Maurier's suspense novels introduced a unique psychological complexity that accomplished more than sensationalizing her plots. Few readers perceived the subtle themes that reflected du Maurier's inner turmoil.

Drawing on previously unavailable documents, Forster sympathetically reveals the forces that drove du Maurier's fiction and caused her collapse when...