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I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys
‘An absolute belter of a biography’ MARINA HYDE A Times Literary Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2022 An LA Times Best Book of the Year 2022 An intimate, revealing and profoundly moving biography of Jean Rhys, acclaimed author of Wide Sargasso Sea.
An obsessive and troubled genius, Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling and unnerving writers of the twentieth century. Memories of a conflicted Caribbean childhood haunt the four fictions that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England. Rhys’s experiences of heartbreak, poverty, notoriety, breakdowns and even imprisonment all became grist for her writing, forming an iconic ‘Rhys woman’ whose personality – vulnerable, witty, watchful and angry – was often mistaken, and still is, for a self-portrait.
Many details of Rhys’s life emerge from her memoir, Smile Please and the stories she wrote throughout her long and challenging career. But it’s a shock to discover that no biographer – until now – has researched the crucial seventeen years that Rhys spent living on the remote Caribbean island of Dominica; the island which haunted Rhys’s mind and her work for the rest of her life.
Luminous and penetrating, Seymour’s biography reveals a proud and fiercely independent artist, one who experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil – and yet was never a victim. I Used to Live Here Once enables one of our most excitingly intuitive biographers to uncover the hidden truth about a fascinatingly elusive woman. The figure who emerges for Seymour is powerful, cultured, self-mocking, self-absorbed, unpredictable and often darkly funny. Persuasive, surprising and compassionate, this unforgettable biography brings Jean Rhys to life as never before.
An obsessive and troubled genius, Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling and unnerving writers of the twentieth century. Memories of a conflicted Caribbean childhood haunt the four fictions that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England. Rhys’s experiences of heartbreak, poverty, notoriety, breakdowns and even imprisonment all became grist for her writing, forming an iconic ‘Rhys woman’ whose personality – vulnerable, witty, watchful and angry – was often mistaken, and still is, for a self-portrait.
Many details of Rhys’s life emerge from her memoir, Smile Please and the stories she wrote throughout her long and challenging career. But it’s a shock to discover that no biographer – until now – has researched the crucial seventeen years that Rhys spent living on the remote Caribbean island of Dominica; the island which haunted Rhys’s mind and her work for the rest of her life.
Luminous and penetrating, Seymour’s biography reveals a proud and fiercely independent artist, one who experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil – and yet was never a victim. I Used to Live Here Once enables one of our most excitingly intuitive biographers to uncover the hidden truth about a fascinatingly elusive woman. The figure who emerges for Seymour is powerful, cultured, self-mocking, self-absorbed, unpredictable and often darkly funny. Persuasive, surprising and compassionate, this unforgettable biography brings Jean Rhys to life as never before.
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First published June 28, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
December 13, 2022
Rhys would often write about women who sold their bodies for sex.
This is a little disappointing as a modern biography of Rhys, principally because there don't seem seem to be many sources of information and so Seymour has recourse to Rhys' own Smile Please, her unfinished autobiography. It seems that letters didn't survive though there are Rhys' notebooks - whatever the reason, there is little that I learned here that isn't already part of the Rhys life.
When Seymour does make interesting pronouncements, there's no evidence offered: for example, she claims that the short stories are more autobiographical than the novels - proof, please?
There is also some interesting placing of Rhys into literary contexts: she knew Rosamund Lehmann and Sonia Orwell, James Joyce and Hemingway - though she was never really part of a coterie or a seeker after fame in itself.
It's nice to see the idea of the 'Rhys Woman' treated with a bit more nuance than is usually the case: Seymour especially makes the case that while reading and writing were rescue projects for Rhys herself, her female protagonists are less intellectual than their creator, set adrift with no resources upon which to fall back.
I found Seymour's reticence about the racial aspect of Rhys' life and writings especially problematic: she often talks of the 'island-born' women as a substitute for calling them Black or mixed-race - something quite confusing as white Rhys was also 'island-born'. And she makes lots of recuperative statements towards the end about how Wide Sargasso Sea deals with Rhys' own family's complicit heritage in nineteenth-century slave-worked plantations, but doesn't really deal with how that knowledge gets processed and acknowledged to be dealt with in that last, great book.
With enigmatic statements about Rhys' troubled relationship with her mother also haunting this book, the whole thing feels disappointingly opaque.
May 19, 2022
For years, I kept hearing about this Jean Rhys and this novel Wide Sargasso Sea. I found a copy of the novel and finally read it, riveted. I loved her reimagining of the ‘mad wife’ in Jane Eyre, Bronte’s story turned into a social commentary about colonialism and the rejection of female sexuality.
That was twenty years or so ago. I knew nothing more about Rhys when I picked up this new biography, I Used To Live Here Once by Miranda Seymour. Her portrait of Rhys is unforgettable and complex, the story of a woman born too soon, who lived passionately and in seclusion, married unwisely for love, plummeted from wealth to poverty, and rose to fame to forgotten to lionized.
Seymour writes that “Rhys often said that she wrote about herself because that was all she knew,” and throughout the biography she demonstrates how Rhys’ characters were born of her experience, but also that they are born of Rhys’ imagination, and are not autobiographical clones. Rhys took what she knew, her Dominican childhood, her young adulthood as a chorus girl on tour, her bohemian life in Paris, her love affairs and marriages, and turned it into dark stories that publishers found too raw, unfit for a woman writer’s pen.
We met a woman who is damaged but determined, who bends to her weaknesses and shows incredible strength. Her beauty and charm lured men to want to possess her, then her violent temper dealt out blows. She walked away from an education to pursue the stage and yet wrote what the BBC identified as one of the ‘top 100 most influential novels.’
Her life was almost incomprehensibly complicated! If anyone truly lived, it was Rhys. Over her long life she went mad and discarded friends and men, hobnobbed with so many important people! Like so many Lost Generation writers she struggled with alcoholism, drug dependency and depression. She suffered accidents, underwent abortions, and was hospitalized for mental breakdown. No wonder she created unforgettable characters, women who contended with so much.
She was seventy-five years old when she published Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966. Rhys was ‘rediscovered’ by a new generation, finally found financial security, and unwelcomed fame. To the end of her life, she took care of her appearance, this petit blue-eyed, once blond-haired octogenarian, with her pink and white wigs and fashionable colorful clothes.
You won’t always like Jean Rhys. But you will be impressed by her resilience and determination.
Now, to read the rest of her work…
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
That was twenty years or so ago. I knew nothing more about Rhys when I picked up this new biography, I Used To Live Here Once by Miranda Seymour. Her portrait of Rhys is unforgettable and complex, the story of a woman born too soon, who lived passionately and in seclusion, married unwisely for love, plummeted from wealth to poverty, and rose to fame to forgotten to lionized.
Seymour writes that “Rhys often said that she wrote about herself because that was all she knew,” and throughout the biography she demonstrates how Rhys’ characters were born of her experience, but also that they are born of Rhys’ imagination, and are not autobiographical clones. Rhys took what she knew, her Dominican childhood, her young adulthood as a chorus girl on tour, her bohemian life in Paris, her love affairs and marriages, and turned it into dark stories that publishers found too raw, unfit for a woman writer’s pen.
We met a woman who is damaged but determined, who bends to her weaknesses and shows incredible strength. Her beauty and charm lured men to want to possess her, then her violent temper dealt out blows. She walked away from an education to pursue the stage and yet wrote what the BBC identified as one of the ‘top 100 most influential novels.’
Her life was almost incomprehensibly complicated! If anyone truly lived, it was Rhys. Over her long life she went mad and discarded friends and men, hobnobbed with so many important people! Like so many Lost Generation writers she struggled with alcoholism, drug dependency and depression. She suffered accidents, underwent abortions, and was hospitalized for mental breakdown. No wonder she created unforgettable characters, women who contended with so much.
She was seventy-five years old when she published Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966. Rhys was ‘rediscovered’ by a new generation, finally found financial security, and unwelcomed fame. To the end of her life, she took care of her appearance, this petit blue-eyed, once blond-haired octogenarian, with her pink and white wigs and fashionable colorful clothes.
You won’t always like Jean Rhys. But you will be impressed by her resilience and determination.
Now, to read the rest of her work…
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
September 17, 2025
A Wild Sargasso She
A review of the William Morrow Kindle eBook (May 12, 2022) released in advance of the William Morrow hardcover (August 16, 2022).
I knew I wanted to read this book as soon as I saw a review of it in The Guardian shortly after it was published:
I'm attracted to almost anything Lost Generation related, which I think of as a broad scope term covering the literary folks and hangers-on centred around Paris in the 1920s. The term was apparently first used by Gertrude Stein's garage mechanic and was then co-opted by her and then by Ernest Hemingway in the epigraph for The Sun Also Rises (1926).
Caribbean island born Jean Rhys (1890-1979) was part of that set as she was mentored by Ford Madox Ford in those years and later wrote the roman à clef Quartet (1928) about the experience. Rhys eventually moved back to England where she remained for the rest of her life.
Miranda Seymour's biography covers everything from the early childhood years in Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic), the school years in England, the life on stage as a chorus girl (she couldn't breakthrough as an actress due to her Caribbean island lilt), the early novels and stories, the disappearance from roughly 1939 to the rediscovery in the late 50's/early 60's, the late career breakthrough with Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), the late short stories, the OBE.
It is one heck of a life and made for a great deal of true events which became fictionalized in the short stories and novels. I have read Quartet and Wide Sargasso Sea and also a recent sampler of the short stories in Till September Petronella. I am planning to read The Collected Short Stories (406 pages) for the upcoming 2025 Long Books Challenge.
Because I wanted reminders & references for the future reading I went a bit overboard with noting quotes in the book for my status updates which you can read here if you are accessing from outside of GR.
Trivia and Links
The other major biographies of Jean Rhys are Lilian Pizzichini's The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys (2009) and Carole Angier's Jean Rhys : Life and Work (1985).
You can read a short timeline and biography about Jean Rhys here.
You can access further information at the Jean Rhys Review.
A review of the William Morrow Kindle eBook (May 12, 2022) released in advance of the William Morrow hardcover (August 16, 2022).
I knew I wanted to read this book as soon as I saw a review of it in The Guardian shortly after it was published:
Half its cast are half crazy, and most of the rest are as creepy as hell. Liars and fraudsters, bigamists and bolters, grifters and gropers: they’re all here ... the kind of literary stalker whose pulse races furtively at the sight of an old woman with a bad wig, a whisky habit and (just perhaps) a half-finished manuscript in a drawer. - May 16, 2022 review by Rachel Cooke in The Guardian.
I'm attracted to almost anything Lost Generation related, which I think of as a broad scope term covering the literary folks and hangers-on centred around Paris in the 1920s. The term was apparently first used by Gertrude Stein's garage mechanic and was then co-opted by her and then by Ernest Hemingway in the epigraph for The Sun Also Rises (1926).
Caribbean island born Jean Rhys (1890-1979) was part of that set as she was mentored by Ford Madox Ford in those years and later wrote the roman à clef Quartet (1928) about the experience. Rhys eventually moved back to England where she remained for the rest of her life.
Miranda Seymour's biography covers everything from the early childhood years in Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic), the school years in England, the life on stage as a chorus girl (she couldn't breakthrough as an actress due to her Caribbean island lilt), the early novels and stories, the disappearance from roughly 1939 to the rediscovery in the late 50's/early 60's, the late career breakthrough with Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), the late short stories, the OBE.
It is one heck of a life and made for a great deal of true events which became fictionalized in the short stories and novels. I have read Quartet and Wide Sargasso Sea and also a recent sampler of the short stories in Till September Petronella. I am planning to read The Collected Short Stories (406 pages) for the upcoming 2025 Long Books Challenge.
Because I wanted reminders & references for the future reading I went a bit overboard with noting quotes in the book for my status updates which you can read here if you are accessing from outside of GR.
Trivia and Links
The other major biographies of Jean Rhys are Lilian Pizzichini's The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys (2009) and Carole Angier's Jean Rhys : Life and Work (1985).
You can read a short timeline and biography about Jean Rhys here.
You can access further information at the Jean Rhys Review.
Read
July 6, 2022In these pages, Miranda Seymour crafts a sensitive portrait of an author who was hard to know and often even harder to like, a woman who wrote a timeless classic in "Wide Sargasso Sea" but who almost never knew happiness or peace. My full review here: https://openlettersreview.com/posts/i...
December 25, 2022
Really interesting book about a really interesting life.
Agree with other criticisms here that it's not clear how the author decides what of Rhys' writing reflects her own life, but the author is to be commended for doing so much with so little and for conducting so much new research into Rhys' life. What really stands out to me is how big and influential a support network Rhys had, which is almost a paradox given that her best writing is about poverty and loneliness, although of course she had more than her fair share of both.
The first half is mostly about her island upbringing and her love affairs with the sons of the governor of the bank of england and Lenglet and Ford Madox Ford, which are more interesting than her later life, where she's taken care of but also in a sense held captive by influential women in England's publishing industry. Would've liked to see more on her interactions with the Lost Generation writers, but it seems like she didn't leave her biographers much to work with.
Well worth a read if you're interested in Jean Rhys.
I've only read her contemporary novels, but this convinced me it's time to check out her short stories and also Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea.
Agree with other criticisms here that it's not clear how the author decides what of Rhys' writing reflects her own life, but the author is to be commended for doing so much with so little and for conducting so much new research into Rhys' life. What really stands out to me is how big and influential a support network Rhys had, which is almost a paradox given that her best writing is about poverty and loneliness, although of course she had more than her fair share of both.
The first half is mostly about her island upbringing and her love affairs with the sons of the governor of the bank of england and Lenglet and Ford Madox Ford, which are more interesting than her later life, where she's taken care of but also in a sense held captive by influential women in England's publishing industry. Would've liked to see more on her interactions with the Lost Generation writers, but it seems like she didn't leave her biographers much to work with.
Well worth a read if you're interested in Jean Rhys.
I've only read her contemporary novels, but this convinced me it's time to check out her short stories and also Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea.
July 30, 2022
I am only halfway through this book and I'm not sure I'll finish it. I don't like Miranda Seymour's style of writing and I am particularly irritated by the constant switching between "Gwen", "Jean" "Rhys" and "Ella". I appreciate that it is a challenge to a biographer when the subject chooses to be known by different names at different times of their life but I found many of these switches, sometimes in the same sentence, very distracting. The book seems to be well researched but there is much quoting from Carole Angier's earlier biography, without adding much. Disappointing.
May 17, 2022
A stunningly well-written and researched biography on the great writer Jean Rhys—and very sadly due to the fact that I can't find digital copies of Rhys' writings anywhere, my knowledge of her work is limited to her brilliantly original retelling of Jane Eyre from the point of view of the "mad woman in the attic" —Rochester's wife, "Bertha." With that book, I found it in a used bookstore and read it even though it was extremely difficult on my poor vision. ( I can't read paperbacks anymore due to an eye condition. I rely on digital so I can adjust the font.) Why aren't Jean's books in electronic form? It's a disgrace. But I digress...
Jean is an extremely complex woman who had a difficult life. She also had a natural ability. It's quite astonishing, given her lack of formal education, what a profound ability she had—but she also worked very hard at it, and had some extremely talented mentors.
So here is where I take off a star... the author doesn't seem to acknowledge that many times it appears as if what the author refers to as "love" relationships were really little more than Jean being forced to exchange sex for anything, whether it was a place to live, a job, a publishing deal, or even her literary agent! Many times I'd start to think "Okay, well, at least she didn't have to sleep with this one..." and then the author would blithely mention that Jean started a physical relationship with this one too. They could not have all been willingly reciprocal relationships given they always seemed to start when Jean either had no money or was desperately striving for a career, or both. I would have loved to have seen the author take on this topic a bit more.
That said, if you are a fan of Jean's writing, and I am definitely am, then you need to pick up this biography. And I hope her estate or publisher or whomever is controlling her copyrights will make her works available in digital form.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and Miranda Seymour for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I just reviewed I Used to Live Here Once by Miranda Seymour. #IUsedtoLiveHereOnce #NetGalley
Jean is an extremely complex woman who had a difficult life. She also had a natural ability. It's quite astonishing, given her lack of formal education, what a profound ability she had—but she also worked very hard at it, and had some extremely talented mentors.
So here is where I take off a star... the author doesn't seem to acknowledge that many times it appears as if what the author refers to as "love" relationships were really little more than Jean being forced to exchange sex for anything, whether it was a place to live, a job, a publishing deal, or even her literary agent! Many times I'd start to think "Okay, well, at least she didn't have to sleep with this one..." and then the author would blithely mention that Jean started a physical relationship with this one too. They could not have all been willingly reciprocal relationships given they always seemed to start when Jean either had no money or was desperately striving for a career, or both. I would have loved to have seen the author take on this topic a bit more.
That said, if you are a fan of Jean's writing, and I am definitely am, then you need to pick up this biography. And I hope her estate or publisher or whomever is controlling her copyrights will make her works available in digital form.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and Miranda Seymour for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I just reviewed I Used to Live Here Once by Miranda Seymour. #IUsedtoLiveHereOnce #NetGalley
December 25, 2023
This is the first biography I have ever read and I have to say, I think it's an excellent introduction to this new genre. Jean Rhys is one of my favourite authors and it was interesting to take a closer look at her eventful life. Seymour has clearly done her research and paints a very detailed picture of Rhys. I appreciate the care she takes to distinguish between the protagonists in Rhys's novels and Rhys herself - though I wonder why she doesn't use the same standard when it comes to the short stories, which I thought was a shame. Then again, I have yet to read those, so I can't exactly judge there. Overall, I'm impressed with the work that went into this and appreciate Seymour's clear style!
December 23, 2023
4.5. Full disclosure, I didn't "read" this but listened to it as an audiobook at work. The narrator has the best elderly British lady voice that was so nice to listen to for hours.
Some parts I really liked: (spoilers ahead)
The atmosphere of bohemian London brought to life by spotlighting some of Rhys' literary connections, and that her efforts during WWI were downplayed in her autobiography Smile Please- one of the many interesting things to learn she left out for some unknown reason.
Asking James Joyce to zip up her dress in an elevator on her way to a party.
My favourite stage of Rhys' life has to be after she published Wide Sargasso Sea in her 70s. Her publishers sent her on vacation here and there with hand selected new books to read each time (vacations just for reading, the dream!). She blew her Sargasso Sea money shopping at Biba and going to the "afternoon ballet" during trips to Paris.
In her 80s when her health started to decline rapidly, family friends of her publisher took her in and she became "the old punk in the attic". They had her room painted and decorated in her three favourite shades of pink (pink floors!). She had two wigs: blonde, and pink. When she started to really lose it and was on her worst behaviour, they nicknamed her Johnny Rotten.
This biography made me love Rhys so much more. I think you can really understand the gist of what there is to know about her through her books- she tells you herself if you're really listening- but I really enjoyed the world of Rhys that Seymour brought to life here. Highly recommend!
Some parts I really liked: (spoilers ahead)
The atmosphere of bohemian London brought to life by spotlighting some of Rhys' literary connections, and that her efforts during WWI were downplayed in her autobiography Smile Please- one of the many interesting things to learn she left out for some unknown reason.
Asking James Joyce to zip up her dress in an elevator on her way to a party.
My favourite stage of Rhys' life has to be after she published Wide Sargasso Sea in her 70s. Her publishers sent her on vacation here and there with hand selected new books to read each time (vacations just for reading, the dream!). She blew her Sargasso Sea money shopping at Biba and going to the "afternoon ballet" during trips to Paris.
In her 80s when her health started to decline rapidly, family friends of her publisher took her in and she became "the old punk in the attic". They had her room painted and decorated in her three favourite shades of pink (pink floors!). She had two wigs: blonde, and pink. When she started to really lose it and was on her worst behaviour, they nicknamed her Johnny Rotten.
This biography made me love Rhys so much more. I think you can really understand the gist of what there is to know about her through her books- she tells you herself if you're really listening- but I really enjoyed the world of Rhys that Seymour brought to life here. Highly recommend!
August 28, 2022
Best biography of Rhys since Carole Angier’s. A lesson in carefully balancing the positive and negative. From the slow-motion car-crash that was Rhys’s life, a charming, immersive book has arrived.
April 19, 2023
I feel I have lived Jean Rhys's life. What more can one ask of a biography?
June 18, 2023
This was a challenging journey through the often tortured life of Jean Rhys. She must have been strong-willed to continue despite her difficulties.
She came across as a deeply unhappy woman who took it out on those around her. I can’t say that I enjoyed this book, but it’s worth reading.
She came across as a deeply unhappy woman who took it out on those around her. I can’t say that I enjoyed this book, but it’s worth reading.
August 30, 2022
I enjoyed reading "I Used to Live Here Once" while also reading Jean Rhys's first four novels (still working on Good Morning, Midnight, and have Wide Sargasso Sea on my to-read table). Miranda Seymour's new biography of Rhys helps make sense of this reclusive writer's dark, pity-filled early novels and short stories (also on my list) and provides great background for launching into Sargasso Sea.
Seymour's work is no hagiography. She presents Rhys as she was--sometimes vicious and mean, a drunk, almost always in poverty, asking for a handout from friends and family until later fame made her somewhat wealthy, failing to meet her deadlines, writing where and when and how she wanted. Rhys was self-centered, self-absorbed, egotistical, demanding, difficult (especially when drunk) and a sucker for male attention. Seymour's book is an honest portrayal of those aspects of the writer, which would be what Rhys would want, since she always wanted to write with her own voice.
Rhys is not someone I would have liked--always a sad outcome after reading a biography, but a credit to Seymour, who traveled to Dominica, Tulsa, Oklahoma (where Rhys's letters are archived) and her homes in England in her search for the true picture of the life and character of this unusual writer.
Seymour states that Rhys was one of the best women writers of the 20th century, and reports that a writer for the New York Times Book Review claimed in 1974 that Rhys was the "best living English writer" (leading me to ask "who died?"). I'd dispute that claim regardless--Rhys wasn't even short-listed for the Booker prize during the 1970s.
Though Seymour unfortunately doesn't explore Rhys's prose in detail, her writing habits are described, and what emerged was a unique writing style, drawing from various influences, but definitely her own--as Seymour indicates she wanted it. Rhys expertly delves into the inner thoughts of lost women. Unlike modern writers who endlessly detail the woe-is-me inner dialogue and fearsome speculation of their characters, Rhys managed to keep her self-pitying remarks clipped and at times ironic. She struggled with her writing, especially when she was writing Wide Sargasso Sea, in an almost Flaubert-like manner, revising every sentence, every word. But God bless her for being able to write each of her five lovely novels in fewer than 300 pages.
I suspect I Used to Live Here Once will become THE go-to biography of Jean Rhys, and focus again attention on this writer, whose economy of prose has a lot to teach the writers of today.
Seymour's work is no hagiography. She presents Rhys as she was--sometimes vicious and mean, a drunk, almost always in poverty, asking for a handout from friends and family until later fame made her somewhat wealthy, failing to meet her deadlines, writing where and when and how she wanted. Rhys was self-centered, self-absorbed, egotistical, demanding, difficult (especially when drunk) and a sucker for male attention. Seymour's book is an honest portrayal of those aspects of the writer, which would be what Rhys would want, since she always wanted to write with her own voice.
Rhys is not someone I would have liked--always a sad outcome after reading a biography, but a credit to Seymour, who traveled to Dominica, Tulsa, Oklahoma (where Rhys's letters are archived) and her homes in England in her search for the true picture of the life and character of this unusual writer.
Seymour states that Rhys was one of the best women writers of the 20th century, and reports that a writer for the New York Times Book Review claimed in 1974 that Rhys was the "best living English writer" (leading me to ask "who died?"). I'd dispute that claim regardless--Rhys wasn't even short-listed for the Booker prize during the 1970s.
Though Seymour unfortunately doesn't explore Rhys's prose in detail, her writing habits are described, and what emerged was a unique writing style, drawing from various influences, but definitely her own--as Seymour indicates she wanted it. Rhys expertly delves into the inner thoughts of lost women. Unlike modern writers who endlessly detail the woe-is-me inner dialogue and fearsome speculation of their characters, Rhys managed to keep her self-pitying remarks clipped and at times ironic. She struggled with her writing, especially when she was writing Wide Sargasso Sea, in an almost Flaubert-like manner, revising every sentence, every word. But God bless her for being able to write each of her five lovely novels in fewer than 300 pages.
I suspect I Used to Live Here Once will become THE go-to biography of Jean Rhys, and focus again attention on this writer, whose economy of prose has a lot to teach the writers of today.
September 15, 2025
(Prefatory aside: I think I need to stop reading biographies of writers whose work I haven't yet read.)
Rhys is best known for her Jane Eyre prequel, Wide Sargasso Sea, but she had a long and frequently critically acclaimed career as a writer even before WSS. Born on the Caribbean island of Domenica, she moved to England while still a teen and spent the rest of her life in Europe (with one multi-month return to Domenica in her 40s.) She was on the stage as an actor and dancer in her 20s and 30s, married three times, and left one daughter. Ford Madox Ford was her mentor (and lover) as she started her writing career, but that relationship lasted only a few years. Throughout her career, though, she attracted partisans who were influential in promoting her work and providing financial support: despite the critical acclaim, her writing pre-WSS was not lucrative.
I would have appreciated this more if I were more familiar with her work, but it held my interest nonetheless.
Rhys is best known for her Jane Eyre prequel, Wide Sargasso Sea, but she had a long and frequently critically acclaimed career as a writer even before WSS. Born on the Caribbean island of Domenica, she moved to England while still a teen and spent the rest of her life in Europe (with one multi-month return to Domenica in her 40s.) She was on the stage as an actor and dancer in her 20s and 30s, married three times, and left one daughter. Ford Madox Ford was her mentor (and lover) as she started her writing career, but that relationship lasted only a few years. Throughout her career, though, she attracted partisans who were influential in promoting her work and providing financial support: despite the critical acclaim, her writing pre-WSS was not lucrative.
I would have appreciated this more if I were more familiar with her work, but it held my interest nonetheless.
July 18, 2022
A complicated but interesting woman.
July 8, 2025
Having finished reading all Jean Rhys's fiction last month I thought I'd read a recent biography. I'd heard good things about Miranda Seymour's biography and I wasn't disappointed.
It is well-written and well-researched. It manages to talk about her work and her life in a way where the intertwining of the two is visible but that demonstrates that her work is more than just loosely disguised autobiography, although that is an element. Rhys' main characters might share some events in common with Rhys but Rhys herself was a survivor and managed, in the main, to handle setbacks and difficulties.
Seymour also doesn't make this a hagiography. Rhys could be a difficult - dangerous(?) - person when she wasn't getting what she wanted or when she was drunk. In some respects she's the female equivalent of the much more common male writer whose bad behaviour is overlooked because of their talent. She was fortunate to be surrounded by people willing to put up with that behaviour.
But Seymour's most important point is that Rhys was an exceptional writer who worked and re-worked her material. She was fastidious about correcting things. She obviously worked out a lot of what she wanted to say over and over again in her head before even setting it down on paper. Then went at it again and again once it was set down. This was a frustration to friends and publishers. But it works.
I'd not heard of Jean Rhys until I listened to an episode of Backlisted in 2015 - well, that's when it originally went out, but I suspect I heard it later than that. Backlisted made me want to read a lot of things that I would never have read otherwise, but Jean Rhys is the first one who I've read everything of. Except Smile, which was her unfinished autobiography. I'm hoping to read that at the British Library on Saturday.
Excellent read.
It is well-written and well-researched. It manages to talk about her work and her life in a way where the intertwining of the two is visible but that demonstrates that her work is more than just loosely disguised autobiography, although that is an element. Rhys' main characters might share some events in common with Rhys but Rhys herself was a survivor and managed, in the main, to handle setbacks and difficulties.
Seymour also doesn't make this a hagiography. Rhys could be a difficult - dangerous(?) - person when she wasn't getting what she wanted or when she was drunk. In some respects she's the female equivalent of the much more common male writer whose bad behaviour is overlooked because of their talent. She was fortunate to be surrounded by people willing to put up with that behaviour.
But Seymour's most important point is that Rhys was an exceptional writer who worked and re-worked her material. She was fastidious about correcting things. She obviously worked out a lot of what she wanted to say over and over again in her head before even setting it down on paper. Then went at it again and again once it was set down. This was a frustration to friends and publishers. But it works.
I'd not heard of Jean Rhys until I listened to an episode of Backlisted in 2015 - well, that's when it originally went out, but I suspect I heard it later than that. Backlisted made me want to read a lot of things that I would never have read otherwise, but Jean Rhys is the first one who I've read everything of. Except Smile, which was her unfinished autobiography. I'm hoping to read that at the British Library on Saturday.
Excellent read.
December 23, 2025
I have read practically all of Rhys but had never read anything in depth about her life. A podcast led me to this biography, which makes me eager to read what I haven’t read abd go back and read it all again.
Want to read
March 25, 2023Mentioned in Slightly Foxed The Real Reader’s Quarterly No. 77 Spring 2023
January 17, 2023
A too long take on a Rhys that I finished because of my true interest in her life. I think Rhys herself would have insisted a lot of the repetition & focus on the frivolous be edited out. I was also disturbed by how easily the biographer wrote about the antisemitism, violence and hate spewed by Rhys in real life. We can understand why Rhys may have been so cruel and discriminatory but still hold her accountable. 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3 due to the meticulous research.
January 15, 2023
A fascinating life made boring in the telling. I would only recommend this to Rhys fans, to whom the early chapters might make more sense than they did to me. I found the first 1/2 to 2/3 dreary and boring, despite the varied and interesting ideas places and events. I'd say it's all in the telling.
April 17, 2022
I Used to Live Here Once by Miranda Seymour is a fascinating biography about Jean Rhys, a writer who grew up in the Caribbean, and how her early life was woven into her stories.
I loved all the old pictures. The story was full of interesting facts, and it seems so much research went into writing this account of Jean Rhys's life. I enjoyed reading this book and getting to know Jean and the people she met along her journey in life.
#IUsedtoLiveHereOnce #NetGalley @wwnorton
I loved all the old pictures. The story was full of interesting facts, and it seems so much research went into writing this account of Jean Rhys's life. I enjoyed reading this book and getting to know Jean and the people she met along her journey in life.
#IUsedtoLiveHereOnce #NetGalley @wwnorton
June 24, 2022
Miranda Seymour is a prolific author of fiction as well as marvelous biographies. Her own elegant writing style pulls the reader along in the often rollercoaster lives of her subjects. I Used to Live Here Once is maybe the most tempest-tossed life story she has undertaken. Jean Rhys is most widely known for her novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, which is a brilliantly imagined backstory of Rochester's locked-away wife in Jane Eyre. Rhys could certainly describe the terrors of madness and the euphoria of success from her own lived experience. Reading about her life can be a mostly dark experience due to her mental health problems, addictions, tragic losses, and highly dependent relationships with men who were no more successful at managing their own lives than Rhys was at dealing with hers. Her childhood was dominated by two parents who were polar opposites, her father doting and her mother critical and angry. Rhys' adult life was certainly characterized by a sort of bipolar (not meant in the clinical sense) travel between the emotional extremes of her childhood in Dominica. When Rhys was on her own and unable to support herself as an adult, dear, generous friends took care of her. Her talents and lively personality made her a welcome guest in the homes of writers and artists in the Paris of the 1920s and London over several decades. Reading this book has made me interested in Ms. Seymour's other biographies as well as Jean Rhys’ novels. Books by the latter were republished in 2020.
July 29, 2022
What a complicated life!
Friends who secretly stole her ideas, tried to steal her thunder, or just outright in her face betrayed her! How many of these “friends” could she Really count on, I wonder? And that’s just a small part of the book I can’t get out of my head!
I found this book sad and wonderful. Thank goodness these papers were found!
Friends who secretly stole her ideas, tried to steal her thunder, or just outright in her face betrayed her! How many of these “friends” could she Really count on, I wonder? And that’s just a small part of the book I can’t get out of my head!
I found this book sad and wonderful. Thank goodness these papers were found!
September 18, 2023
Unfortunately couldn’t finish this. Very interesting subject matter, very distracting writing style…
October 15, 2022
Only very recently have I read any fiction by Jean Rhys (Voyage In the Dark -- an incredibly good book) but I have heard about Rhys for a long time. Most of what I'd heard had to do with her alcoholism and the resulting bad behavior. Rhys' drinking does play a big part in this biography (how could it not?) but Seymour never sensationalizes it or judges Rhys. Considering that Rhys destroyed much of her correspondence, was very reluctant to give interviews and that many of the people who knew about Rhys' early life died a long time ago, it's amazing that such a readable, insightful biography of her could be written. Seymour has done a fine job in gathering all the stories she could from people who actually knew or met Rhys, doing a deep dive into Rhys archives and, most important of all, letting Rhys' own words, both in fiction form and not, illuminate the life of this brilliant, complicated, often difficult writer.
There were times during this book when I wanted to know much more, especially during Rhys' Paris
and post-War years, but those details seem to have been lost. Seymour wisely does not speculate too much. The focus on Rhys' early life in Dominica, how it "haunted" her, is a thread throughout this book and Seymour does successfully highlight the importance of those formative years in Rhys' writing.
One of the things I enjoyed most in this book was reading about all the work, the pain, that went into Rhys' writing. The rewrites and more rewrites and edits, sometimes taking decades to complete a short story that had been floating around in her mind. Writing was often a struggle for Rhys, particularly in her later years, but it's clear that it was her vocation. She took writing seriously because, really, it was all that she was capable of doing. Rhys understood that writing is hard work. I appreciate Seymour's truthful depiction of this and of the business/money aspect of writing (agents, rights, competing publishers) that goes along with trying to make a living through words.
Of course, Rhys' personal life was very compelling, the three husbands and various love affairs, the once abandoned daughter whom she cherished. Rhys had many friends and admirers who put up with a lot of bad behavior from her because they believed in her work. Rhys wasn't always likable -- if she had spit at me while drunk, which apparently she was prone to doing, I wouldn't be so forgiving -- but ultimately I have to admire her. Not only was Rhys a brilliant writer, but she experienced so much pain and loss, lived through some really bleak years, but she kept going, kept writing. This was a very enjoyable book. I'm eager to read more of Jean Rhys.
(One quibble is that there are two photos in this book that claim to show Jean Rhys with her first husband on their honeymoon, but I am very doubtful. If you look closely, the woman in the photos does not look at all like Rhys, either in face or body, and the playful poses seem very unlike Rhys. I wonder if anyone has noticed this?)
There were times during this book when I wanted to know much more, especially during Rhys' Paris
and post-War years, but those details seem to have been lost. Seymour wisely does not speculate too much. The focus on Rhys' early life in Dominica, how it "haunted" her, is a thread throughout this book and Seymour does successfully highlight the importance of those formative years in Rhys' writing.
One of the things I enjoyed most in this book was reading about all the work, the pain, that went into Rhys' writing. The rewrites and more rewrites and edits, sometimes taking decades to complete a short story that had been floating around in her mind. Writing was often a struggle for Rhys, particularly in her later years, but it's clear that it was her vocation. She took writing seriously because, really, it was all that she was capable of doing. Rhys understood that writing is hard work. I appreciate Seymour's truthful depiction of this and of the business/money aspect of writing (agents, rights, competing publishers) that goes along with trying to make a living through words.
Of course, Rhys' personal life was very compelling, the three husbands and various love affairs, the once abandoned daughter whom she cherished. Rhys had many friends and admirers who put up with a lot of bad behavior from her because they believed in her work. Rhys wasn't always likable -- if she had spit at me while drunk, which apparently she was prone to doing, I wouldn't be so forgiving -- but ultimately I have to admire her. Not only was Rhys a brilliant writer, but she experienced so much pain and loss, lived through some really bleak years, but she kept going, kept writing. This was a very enjoyable book. I'm eager to read more of Jean Rhys.
(One quibble is that there are two photos in this book that claim to show Jean Rhys with her first husband on their honeymoon, but I am very doubtful. If you look closely, the woman in the photos does not look at all like Rhys, either in face or body, and the playful poses seem very unlike Rhys. I wonder if anyone has noticed this?)
July 10, 2022
In depicting the long, often tortured life of author Jean Rhys in I USED TO LIVE HERE ONCE, British biographer Miranda Seymour has found metaphor and meaning in the development of a dynamic woman, a feminist and deep thinker who was rarely able to fully enjoy the fruits of her labor.
Rhys was born in 1890 on the small island of Dominica in the Caribbean. Her parents were of Welsh and Scottish descent, making their daughter, Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams, a white Creole --- that is, someone who would garner no respect either in her birth country or in England, where she immigrated at age 16. Flogged by her emotionally cold mother and subtly sexually abused by her arrogant father, she was fortunate to be sent to England to live with relatives.
There, Rhys began to find small comforts in the backstreets of London and elsewhere --- outlandish escapades as a chorus girl and a chance to express her powerful femininity with husbands, lovers and supporters like Ford Madox Ford, who suggested her name change. He recognized not only her talent but also her underlying rage, which she grappled with all her life --- from her early days of rejection and cruel treatment by her family, to her constantly changing love life and the losses and chaos that marriages and affairs continually generated.
For self-satisfaction, and possibly revenge, Rhys projected herself backwards. She presented to her readers the island atmosphere of her youth in her most successful work, WIDE SARGASSO SEA. In it, she daringly dreams a very different scenario for the character of Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’s JANE EYRE. Readers may well see Rochester’s Creole wife as Rhys herself, the hidden “madwoman in the attic.”
Seymour has explored other challenging females in her distinguished writing career, notably Mary Shelley and the wife and daughter of Lord Byron. In this work, she has dusted off and brought to sparkling view even the smallest aspects of Rhys’ bizarre bouts of self-destruction contrasted with her undeniable talent. Rhys struggled with and generally lost herself to alcohol; she employed heavy makeup and wigs to disguise herself as she aged; and her dark side was often on display, with tantrums and her ironically titled, though never completed, autobiography, Smile Please. Her short story, “I Used to Live Here Once,” was an eerie tale whose narrator considers herself to be a ghost, unseen by others, trying to chart a path through the unknown.
Readers will be grateful that Seymour has brought Jean Rhys back to life with a lively narrative and some fascinating photographs. She undoubtedly will inspire them to read or reread the imaginative creations of her subject. Though Rhys often battled darkness, she also was able to declare, “Every day is a new day. Every day you are a new person.”
Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott
Rhys was born in 1890 on the small island of Dominica in the Caribbean. Her parents were of Welsh and Scottish descent, making their daughter, Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams, a white Creole --- that is, someone who would garner no respect either in her birth country or in England, where she immigrated at age 16. Flogged by her emotionally cold mother and subtly sexually abused by her arrogant father, she was fortunate to be sent to England to live with relatives.
There, Rhys began to find small comforts in the backstreets of London and elsewhere --- outlandish escapades as a chorus girl and a chance to express her powerful femininity with husbands, lovers and supporters like Ford Madox Ford, who suggested her name change. He recognized not only her talent but also her underlying rage, which she grappled with all her life --- from her early days of rejection and cruel treatment by her family, to her constantly changing love life and the losses and chaos that marriages and affairs continually generated.
For self-satisfaction, and possibly revenge, Rhys projected herself backwards. She presented to her readers the island atmosphere of her youth in her most successful work, WIDE SARGASSO SEA. In it, she daringly dreams a very different scenario for the character of Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’s JANE EYRE. Readers may well see Rochester’s Creole wife as Rhys herself, the hidden “madwoman in the attic.”
Seymour has explored other challenging females in her distinguished writing career, notably Mary Shelley and the wife and daughter of Lord Byron. In this work, she has dusted off and brought to sparkling view even the smallest aspects of Rhys’ bizarre bouts of self-destruction contrasted with her undeniable talent. Rhys struggled with and generally lost herself to alcohol; she employed heavy makeup and wigs to disguise herself as she aged; and her dark side was often on display, with tantrums and her ironically titled, though never completed, autobiography, Smile Please. Her short story, “I Used to Live Here Once,” was an eerie tale whose narrator considers herself to be a ghost, unseen by others, trying to chart a path through the unknown.
Readers will be grateful that Seymour has brought Jean Rhys back to life with a lively narrative and some fascinating photographs. She undoubtedly will inspire them to read or reread the imaginative creations of her subject. Though Rhys often battled darkness, she also was able to declare, “Every day is a new day. Every day you are a new person.”
Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott
February 17, 2024
A Caribbean ghost story: dull minds sometimes come out with things like “truth is stranger than fiction” and “art imitates life”, platitudes up with which Jean Rhys would indubitably not have put. For as Miranda Seymour’s controlled, meticulous biography shows, life and art intertwine in a way that if one is not careful can become difficult to untangle.
Rhys was a glorious monster. The favoured daughter of a likeable island GP from Dominica, whose fractured relationship with her philistine mother drove so much of her action, comes to London determined to learn to be an actress, and lodges with family: “‘I’ve already noticed,’ her aunt remarked tartly, ‘that you are quite incapable of thinking of anyone but yourself.’” This, and a part-submerged longing to go back to her Caribbean home, are motifs that stay with the former Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams throughout her life.
I Used To Live Here Once carries us through a rich carnival of event and feeling that would inform her writing - from chorus girl, via rich man’s kept woman, marriage to a Dutch-Belgian convict, affair with Ford Madox Ford, second marriage to her publisher’s reader, third marriage to his cousin, to life in a remote Devon village where she achieves Mad Old Lady status, is tormented by the yokels, slapped by a vicar’s wife, and has a bucket of water poured over her while drunk by a neighbour. She ends her days on a pink chaise longue in George Melly’s Camden Town attic, still knocking back a quarter bottle of whisky a day, railing at all and sundry, and longing for a return to the half-imagined tropics of her girlhood. This is how old age, if it must, should be.
Despite her difficulties - and how difficult she could be - Rhys remains one of the most important writers in English of the 20th century. “Keeps one all the time at the central point of feeling,” said one critic not always sympathetic to her, and to achieve this, one feels and Seymour drives towards it, requires a degree of solipsism, self-centredness and focus on one’s own feelings. An author who would muse for years on the correct deployment of a phrase she’d devised is the flip side of a woman who could bear long grudges, scream drunkenly at friends who went to considerable lengths on her behalf, and hurl stones through the windows of neighbours who’d pissed her off.
I Used To Live Here Once is sympathetic without making excuses, deftly written, and enlightening both of a charismatic, challenging human and what informed her extraordinary writing
Rhys was a glorious monster. The favoured daughter of a likeable island GP from Dominica, whose fractured relationship with her philistine mother drove so much of her action, comes to London determined to learn to be an actress, and lodges with family: “‘I’ve already noticed,’ her aunt remarked tartly, ‘that you are quite incapable of thinking of anyone but yourself.’” This, and a part-submerged longing to go back to her Caribbean home, are motifs that stay with the former Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams throughout her life.
I Used To Live Here Once carries us through a rich carnival of event and feeling that would inform her writing - from chorus girl, via rich man’s kept woman, marriage to a Dutch-Belgian convict, affair with Ford Madox Ford, second marriage to her publisher’s reader, third marriage to his cousin, to life in a remote Devon village where she achieves Mad Old Lady status, is tormented by the yokels, slapped by a vicar’s wife, and has a bucket of water poured over her while drunk by a neighbour. She ends her days on a pink chaise longue in George Melly’s Camden Town attic, still knocking back a quarter bottle of whisky a day, railing at all and sundry, and longing for a return to the half-imagined tropics of her girlhood. This is how old age, if it must, should be.
Despite her difficulties - and how difficult she could be - Rhys remains one of the most important writers in English of the 20th century. “Keeps one all the time at the central point of feeling,” said one critic not always sympathetic to her, and to achieve this, one feels and Seymour drives towards it, requires a degree of solipsism, self-centredness and focus on one’s own feelings. An author who would muse for years on the correct deployment of a phrase she’d devised is the flip side of a woman who could bear long grudges, scream drunkenly at friends who went to considerable lengths on her behalf, and hurl stones through the windows of neighbours who’d pissed her off.
I Used To Live Here Once is sympathetic without making excuses, deftly written, and enlightening both of a charismatic, challenging human and what informed her extraordinary writing
April 20, 2023
Probably 3.5 stars, but I rounded down because this felt kind of sloppy in the end. It's a mixed bag, and I agreed a lot with Dwight Garner's review in the New York Times, so I'd definitely suggest reading that.
What Seymour does well: Notably, she goes to great lengths to differentiate Rhys from the the protagonists of her novels and short stories. Too many readers and critics have fallen into the trap of taking her novels/stories as memoir simply repackaged as fiction. Unlike the women of Rhys's fiction, she wasn't going to give up, abandoned and alone in a dingy hotel. Rhys, even in desperate circumstances, was always a survivor. The book acknowledges just how many people helped support an at-times difficult woman through both poverty and success. I also appreciate that this book doesn't attempt to diagnose Rhys. We know she had a history of trauma. She self-medicated with alcohol. She was known for being verbally abusive and physically violent. She was, at times, paranoid. Seymour merely documents without judging or playing armchair psychologist. She documents Rhys in all her complexities and let's them just . . . be. The book really comes into its own and feels fleshed out once Rhys is rediscovered.
What Didn't Work: For how sensitively she treats Rhys's complicated mental health, towards the end of the book, some of the language she uses to describe Rhys in older age reads as a little . . . cruel? And there are a frustrating amount of gaps in Rhys's biography, so Seymour is forced to speculate. She's always upfront when she does it--which I appreciate--but it felt like she took a few too many liberties. I just found these gaps a little frustrating. We're never going to have a truly complete record of Rhys's life--and that's exactly how she wanted it. I was disappointed by just how little of an impression I still have of Rhys's early life, in particular, and the biography felt lean in this section.
I guess it's no surprise that I have complicated feelings about a complicated woman--whose work I deeply appreciate and am glad to see still merits recognition.
What Seymour does well: Notably, she goes to great lengths to differentiate Rhys from the the protagonists of her novels and short stories. Too many readers and critics have fallen into the trap of taking her novels/stories as memoir simply repackaged as fiction. Unlike the women of Rhys's fiction, she wasn't going to give up, abandoned and alone in a dingy hotel. Rhys, even in desperate circumstances, was always a survivor. The book acknowledges just how many people helped support an at-times difficult woman through both poverty and success. I also appreciate that this book doesn't attempt to diagnose Rhys. We know she had a history of trauma. She self-medicated with alcohol. She was known for being verbally abusive and physically violent. She was, at times, paranoid. Seymour merely documents without judging or playing armchair psychologist. She documents Rhys in all her complexities and let's them just . . . be. The book really comes into its own and feels fleshed out once Rhys is rediscovered.
What Didn't Work: For how sensitively she treats Rhys's complicated mental health, towards the end of the book, some of the language she uses to describe Rhys in older age reads as a little . . . cruel? And there are a frustrating amount of gaps in Rhys's biography, so Seymour is forced to speculate. She's always upfront when she does it--which I appreciate--but it felt like she took a few too many liberties. I just found these gaps a little frustrating. We're never going to have a truly complete record of Rhys's life--and that's exactly how she wanted it. I was disappointed by just how little of an impression I still have of Rhys's early life, in particular, and the biography felt lean in this section.
I guess it's no surprise that I have complicated feelings about a complicated woman--whose work I deeply appreciate and am glad to see still merits recognition.
July 8, 2024
When I was in college in the early 1970's, I worked in a bookstore. At that time, Random House started releasing some of Jean Rhys's books (which were written in the 1920's and 30's). I was fascinated by the rather depressing tales of young, mostly aimless, women, who depended on and were exploited by men.
Rhys was born on the small Caribbean island of Dominica to an English family. Her Carribean childhood influenced her most well-known, and generally considered her best, novel. Wide Sargasso Sea. At 17, she left Dominica for Europe, drifting between London and Paris. She was on the periphery of the many expatriate writers and artists living in Paris, but never truly a member. Hers was a long and often depressing life. She frequently depended on the kindness of others for her upkeep, including the wife of George Orwell, and had some type of relationship with Ford Maddox Ford She survived the death of a child, an abortion, divorce, and mental illness.
This is a lengthy and slow-moving book that seems best suited to academics. Also, Rhys, who goes by a variety of different names throughout her life, comes across as selfish and unlikeable.
Rhys was born on the small Caribbean island of Dominica to an English family. Her Carribean childhood influenced her most well-known, and generally considered her best, novel. Wide Sargasso Sea. At 17, she left Dominica for Europe, drifting between London and Paris. She was on the periphery of the many expatriate writers and artists living in Paris, but never truly a member. Hers was a long and often depressing life. She frequently depended on the kindness of others for her upkeep, including the wife of George Orwell, and had some type of relationship with Ford Maddox Ford She survived the death of a child, an abortion, divorce, and mental illness.
This is a lengthy and slow-moving book that seems best suited to academics. Also, Rhys, who goes by a variety of different names throughout her life, comes across as selfish and unlikeable.
July 26, 2022
Another audio listen. The narrator Diana Quick was very good apart from her impression of Jean;s voice which grated on me. There is a lot of detail in this book, the reserach is astonishing, how would i know the absolute truth but its a version. I have heard of The Wide Sargasso Sea, and I think I need to read it now. Jean was such a complex, mood driven, self opinionated and charismatic. She was born on the Caribbean island of Dominica, adored by her father and rejected by her mother. Most probably the root of her issues which dogged her all her life but also stimulated her incredible literary talent . Her whole life astounded me as she seemed to be financially dependent on people for good portions of her life. Her rages and violent outbursts destroyed friendships, but then a new one emerged. She rubbed shoulders with so many people in the public eye in many disciplines. I found the manner of her death terribly sad. I am very pleased to have stuck with listening as I grew into this Biography.
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