Rebecca's Tale is told by Ellie Julyan, the Colonel's youngest daughter, who cares for her father at home. The narrative shifts produce a very different structure from the original "Rebecca", as well as a more postmodern tone that emphasizes the various narrators' unreliability. Also, the book is sometimes placed in a separate genre: while "Rebecca" is classified as a Gothic novel (du Maurier detested its categorization as a romance), "Rebecca’s Tale" is often considered a mystery. "Rebecca’s Tale" continues twenty years after du Maurier's conclusion and begins with the same classic line: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Most
Daphne du Maurier Scapegoat", which she partly financed. Du Maurier was often categorised as a "romantic novelist", a term that she deplored, given her novels rarely have a happy ending, and often have sinister overtones and shadows of the paranormal. In this light, she has more in common with the "sensation novels" of Wilkie Collins and others, which she admired. The obituarist Kate Kellaway wrote: "Du Maurier was mistress of calculated irresolution. She did not want to put her readers' minds at rest. She wanted her riddles to persist. She wanted the novels to continue to haunt us beyond their endings." Du Maurier's