Letters 1931-1966
by Jean Rhys
Francis Wyndham , Diana Melly
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars.
I was bought this as a birthday gift by someone who knew my fanaticism for Jean Rhys. This intimate glimpse into the personal comments of my all-time favourite writer had me mesmerised from start to finish.
The letters include those from 1931, when she was recently estranged from her first husband French-Dutch journalist-songwriter (and spy) Jean Lenglet. Jean was still enjoying the acclaim of her first three books, The Left Bank and Other Stories (1927) Postures/Quartet (1929) and After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (1931).
Like a fly on Jean's various walls, we watch her bumpy life unravel until the 1966 death of her of her third and final husband, solicitor Max Hamer, who had spent much of their marriage jailed for fraud. Jean was now a frail old woman reduced to a life of obscurity, alone in her ramshackle West Country home. Publicly long forgotten and presumed dead, her books were mostly out of print. She was, however, on the brink of major rediscovery with the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea, which she had spent years drafting and perfecting. Unlike any of her earlier works, this final tome was a fictional perspective of the 'madwoman in the attic' from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. It would win Jean the prestigious 1967 WH Smith Literary Award, of which she famously said: 'It has come too late'.
Like all Jean's penned words published or not, this is like sitting all alone with her, listening to a voice that speaks only the pure, haunting truth.
A remarkable, intimate journey through her life that validates and authenticates the integrity of everything she had published and explains so much more about her than we, as diehard fans, could have known.
The most beautiful birthday gift I was ever given. Truly. It will never be allowed out of my house.
As an afterthought, it's interesting that those reviewers who don't "get" the Jean Rhys letters tend to be American, whereas her admirers appear to be British.
