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I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys
I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys | Miranda Seymour
3 posts | 2 read | 1 to read
Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. Memories of her Caribbean girlhood haunt the four short and piercingly brilliant novels that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England, a body of fiction--above all, the extraordinary Wide Sargasso Sea--that has a passionate following today. And yet her own colorful life, including her early years on the Caribbean island of Dominica, remains too little explored, until now.In I Used to Live Here Once, Miranda Seymour sheds new light on the artist whose proud and fiercely solitary life profoundly informed her writing. Rhys experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil, all of which contributed to the "Rhys woman" of her oeuvre. Today, readers still intuitively relate to her unforgettable characters, vulnerable, watchful, and often alarmingly disaster-prone outsiders; women with a different way of moving through the world. And yet, while her works often contain autobiographical material, Rhys herself was never a victim. The figure who emerges for Seymour is cultured, self-mocking, unpredictable--and shockingly contemporary.Based on new research in the Caribbean, a wealth of never-before-seen papers, journals, letters, and photographs, and interviews with those who knew Rhys, I Used to Live Here Once is a luminous and penetrating portrait of a fascinatingly elusive artist.
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tokorowilliamwallace
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#bookspinbingo board laid out with my TBR (options/themes) game results and my location and miscellaneous prompt jar pulls. #bookspin and #doublespin picks are categories: non-fiction library loan & owned vintage/retro self-help (90s and before). Rolls landed on 3, 13 & 15: Kate Elliott or 500+ pages/philosophy or critical theory/owned romance. #roll100 - Witch's Boy (repeat+CR)/Opal&Nev/Bhagavad Gita or Hindu spiritual text.

@TheAromaofBooks

TheAromaofBooks Love your categories!!! 2y
24 likes1 comment
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charl08
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Wondering if I should add all of these to the wishlist (from the TLS' end of year "Books authors recommend" feature.

TrishB Better had- just in case you forget 😁 2y
squirrelbrain I read the tagged book, and I think you need to have read a fair bit of Jean Rhys to appreciate it. (I‘d only read Wide Sargasso Sea). 2y
charl08 @squirrelbrain thanks - sounds like I could make it a project 💪 2y
46 likes4 comments
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squirrelbrain
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Mehso-so

I‘d read a review of this in the press and it sounded fascinating but I found it quite a struggle to get through.

Rhys seems a very troubled, rather unlikeable character. Much of her work is semi-autobiographical and, having only read Wide Sargasso Sea the constant references and comparisons to Rhys‘ work and the characters within were confusing rather than enlightening.

BarbaraBB The cover is gorgeous 😍 2y
Caroline2 Argh that‘s a shame. Yes I read a review too and thought it sounded good. But like you, I‘ve only read the one book of hers too so I might skip this then. 👍 2y
67 likes2 comments