Review by Booklist Review
Writer Jean Rhys (1890--1979), of Wide Sargasso Sea renown, always felt like a "stranger" while growing up both loved and abused on the Caribbean island of Dominica, and throughout her turbulent life in England. Because her exquisite and unnerving fiction depicts troubled women in dire circumstances, Rhys has often been conflated with her characters, inspiring stellar biographer Seymour, whose previous subjects include Mary Shelley and Ada Lovelace, to patiently separate the creator from her creations. Possessing "uncommon beauty," suffering from "crippling self-consciousness and fits of anger and despair," and enthralled by French poetry, Rhys saw the stage as her calling until experiencing the grueling realities of a touring company. She had a wealthy lover who supported but would not marry his "pretty kitten." Rhys, who "thrived on danger," subsequently married three different gamblers and embezzlers. She turned to writing for sanctuary and vengeance, becoming a protégé and lover of Ford Madox Ford. Volatile and combative, Rhys was often destitute, but, fueled by alcohol and rage, persisted in painstakingly composing her radical, razor-edge tales of the grim choices women face. Seymour chronicles the heroic generosity of Rhys' friends and family, the devastating criticism that kept Rhys from publishing her work for nearly 30 years, and her late-in-life fame, sensitively portraying Rhys in all her fury and brilliance.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Critic Seymour (A Ring of Conspirators) delivers a fastidious biography of British author Jean Rhys (1890--1979), who lived an "extraordinary and often reckless life, one that took her from poverty... to eventual recognition as perhaps the finest English woman novelist of the twentieth century." Rhys authored complex and oft-controversial female protagonists, Seymour notes: her 1931 novel After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, for example, featured a "morally dubious heroine" and was considered a "waste of talent" by critics. Seymour makes a convincing case that criticism of Rhys's work was "focused upon the connection between the author herself and the... more victimised women about whom she wrote," and is comprehensive in her coverage of Rhys's struggles with mental illness and addiction: "She had begun drinking so heavily during 1934 that she couldn't write. And without her writing, she went to pieces." Photographs and letters enrich the text, and Seymour's perspective leaves plenty of room for curiosity: "Questions abound. How much of the material on which Rhys seems to draw... was based on historical fact?" This captivating study is well worth a look for fans and scholars. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In Also a Poet, New York Times best-selling author Calhoun blends literary history and memoir, examining her relationship with her father, art critic and poet Peter Schjeldahl, and their shared passion for Frank O'Hara's work as she draws on taped interviews he conducted for a never-completed biography of O'Hara. In Somewhere We Are Human, distinguished writers/activists Grande and Guiñansaca compile 44 essays, poems, and artworks by migrants, refugees, and Dreamers that help clarify the lives of those who are undocumented. Featuring a selection of letters exchanged by Ernest Hemingway and his son Patrick over two decades, Dear Papa was edited by Patrick Hemingway's nephew Brendan Hemingway and his grandson Stephen Adams (40,000-copy first printing). Winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, Horn's Voice of the Fish uses fish, water, and mythic imagery to illuminate the trans experience, with travels through Russia and a devastating injury the author suffered as backdrop. Former deputy editor of The New Yorker and former editor of the New York Times Book Review, McGrath looks back on childhood summers as both joyous memory and obvious idealization in The Summer Friend, also considering a close friendship with someone from a very different background. Starting out with his nearly dying on the day he was born, the world's best-selling novelist has some amazing stories to tell in James Patterson by James Patterson (250,000-copy first printing). Having probed the lives of Mary Shelley and Annabella Milbanke and Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's wife and daughter, acclaimed biographer Seymour takes on Jean Rhys, the celebrated author of Wide Sargasso Sea in I Used to Live Here Once.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A fresh biography of the enigmatic British novelist. Jean Rhys (1890-1979) was a mysterious, fragmented, complicated literary figure. Piecing together the puzzle of her subject's life, veteran novelist and biographer Seymour takes readers on a wild and satisfying ride. The author begins with Rhys' childhood on the Caribbean island of Dominica, where she struggled with the mismatched personalities of her doting father and jealous, abusive mother. Escaping into books, she went on to work as a chorus girl, traveling around England. In 1919, she married a French Dutch journalist and spy, and her subsequent experiences--e.g., economic instability, marital strife, and the devastating loss of her firstborn son--fueled her writing. Influenced by her contemporaries, including Hemingway, Conrad, and Joyce, Rhys was both talented and connected, but her career didn't take off until later in life. For much of her adult life, Rhys relied on the kindness of relatives and friends, adopting a transient lifestyle that took her from city to city and often thrust her into squalor. Feuds with others involved in the publishing and adaptations of her work coupled with unchecked alcoholism--"my will is quite weakened because I drink too much"--did not serve her well professionally even as her talent gained her a significant following. With one surviving daughter who spent little of her life with her and three marriages in her background, her family life remained rocky at times. At age 50, a breakdown propelled Rhys to take up residence in a rectory to convalesce. She once said, "If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. I will not have earned death." As Seymour clearly shows in this compelling biography, Rhys lived by her credo and continued to write: "Heartbreak, poverty, notoriety, breakdowns and even imprisonment: all became grist to Rhys's fiction-making mill." An elegant work that provides readers with a better understanding of a beloved author's life. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
