The Blue Hour

Ok, let's just say that this biography of Jean Rhys (1890-1979) by Lillian Pizzichini was hard for me to put down.  Having read one of her novels already (After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie), I read this in conjunction with some of her early short stories and I've quickly become a fan of Ms Rhys.  Her art definitely mirrored her life.  As a young woman she had the good fortune to be in Paris in the 1920's and became a part of that literary scene.  Ford Maddox Ford helped by encouraging her writing style and their relationship provided fodder for at least one novel and several short stories and Hemingway helped her on with her coat one night, we are told.  But that was as far as that went. 

Jean Rhys led a troubled life.  She had a fondness for men and for alcohol and she learned very early to rely on men for financial reasons, and on the alcohol to help her get through the rough patches.  There was something needful in her that appealed to certain men who made if their business to look after her and whenever she was in desperate straights these men would appear.   And she certainly had no compunction about asking men, even ex-lovers, for money if need be.  

If you like the writing of Jean Rhys then you will be interested in this book, not to learn more about her troubled life, but her ability to create stories of these incidents.  And it's not that these stories are so clever in themselves, but it is in their telling and Ms. Rhys' use of language that makes them magical.