Synopses & Reviews
Autobiographically inspired, Rhys created stories of the slightly adrift every woman looking for an anchor in a cold, hostile landscape. Her heroine in is Anna Morgan, a young woman in her late teens, relocated to England from her beloved home in the West Indies. She works as a chorus girl, traveling the country to dank boarding rooms and shabby theaters. Fortune seems to grab her one day in the shape of a wealthy, older man who sets her up in London, calling for her as his needs dictate. Anna falls in love with him, and allows herself to rely on him totally. When he grows tired of her, she begins a long spiraling decline. This is poignant, tense writing by the woman whom A. Alvarez called "the best living English novelist."
Review
"[Jean Rhys's novels] have the quality of the best books by seeming to have written themselves, and reading them one flinches at truth after truth." Howard Moss
Review
"Every so often someone comes along whose prose style is so alert and fresh, so remote from the mainstream idiom of English social fiction that is seems miraculous that they should be able to write like that and be British too. Jean Rhys is such a writer." The New Yorker
Review
"Miss Rhys has not often been more steadily successful than in her account of Anna Morgan's quite ordinary tragedy. . . . Miss Rhys has done a nearly perfect job." Jonathan Raban
Synopsis
Rhys's voice is starkly simple, yet sharp as nails.
About the Author
Jean Rhys (1890-1979) is the author of Good Morning, Midnight; Voyage in the Dark; After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie; Quartet; and The Collected Short Stories.