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A review by huncamuncamouse
I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys by Miranda Seymour
3.0
Probably 3.5 stars, but I rounded down because this felt kind of sloppy in the end. It's a mixed bag, and I agreed a lot with Dwight Garner's review in the New York Times, so I'd definitely suggest reading that.
What Seymour does well: Notably, she goes to great lengths to differentiate Rhys from the the protagonists of her novels and short stories. Too many readers and critics have fallen into the trap of taking her novels/stories as memoir simply repackaged as fiction. Unlike the women of Rhys's fiction, she wasn't going to give up, abandoned and alone in a dingy hotel. Rhys, even in desperate circumstances, was always a survivor. The book acknowledges just how many people helped support an at-times difficult woman through both poverty and success. I also appreciate that this book doesn't attempt to diagnose Rhys. We know she had a history of trauma. She self-medicated with alcohol. She was known for being verbally abusive and physically violent. She was, at times, paranoid. Seymour merely documents without judging or playing armchair psychologist. She documents Rhys in all her complexities and let's them just . . . be. The book really comes into its own and feels fleshed out once Rhys is rediscovered.
What Didn't Work: For how sensitively she treats Rhys's complicated mental health, towards the end of the book, some of the language she uses to describe Rhys in older age reads as a little . . . cruel? And there are a frustrating amount of gaps in Rhys's biography, so Seymour is forced to speculate. She's always upfront when she does it--which I appreciate--but it felt like she took a few too many liberties. I just found these gaps a little frustrating. We're never going to have a truly complete record of Rhys's life--and that's exactly how she wanted it. I was disappointed by just how little of an impression I still have of Rhys's early life, in particular, and the biography felt lean in this section.
I guess it's no surprise that I have complicated feelings about a complicated woman--whose work I deeply appreciate and am glad to see still merits recognition.
What Seymour does well: Notably, she goes to great lengths to differentiate Rhys from the the protagonists of her novels and short stories. Too many readers and critics have fallen into the trap of taking her novels/stories as memoir simply repackaged as fiction. Unlike the women of Rhys's fiction, she wasn't going to give up, abandoned and alone in a dingy hotel. Rhys, even in desperate circumstances, was always a survivor. The book acknowledges just how many people helped support an at-times difficult woman through both poverty and success. I also appreciate that this book doesn't attempt to diagnose Rhys. We know she had a history of trauma. She self-medicated with alcohol. She was known for being verbally abusive and physically violent. She was, at times, paranoid. Seymour merely documents without judging or playing armchair psychologist. She documents Rhys in all her complexities and let's them just . . . be. The book really comes into its own and feels fleshed out once Rhys is rediscovered.
What Didn't Work: For how sensitively she treats Rhys's complicated mental health, towards the end of the book, some of the language she uses to describe Rhys in older age reads as a little . . . cruel? And there are a frustrating amount of gaps in Rhys's biography, so Seymour is forced to speculate. She's always upfront when she does it--which I appreciate--but it felt like she took a few too many liberties. I just found these gaps a little frustrating. We're never going to have a truly complete record of Rhys's life--and that's exactly how she wanted it. I was disappointed by just how little of an impression I still have of Rhys's early life, in particular, and the biography felt lean in this section.
I guess it's no surprise that I have complicated feelings about a complicated woman--whose work I deeply appreciate and am glad to see still merits recognition.