I USED TO LIVE HERE ONCE

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.