I Used to Live Here Once - The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys

-An absolute belter of a biography- MARINA HYDEA Times Literary Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2022An LA Times Best Book of the Year 2022An intimate, revealing and profoundly moving biography of Jean Rhys, acclaimed author of Wide Sargasso Sea. An obsessive and troubled genius, Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling and unnerving writers of the twentieth century. Memories of a conflicted Caribbean childhood haunt the four fictions that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England. Rhys-s experiences of heartbreak, poverty, notoriety, breakdowns and even imprisonment all became grist for her writing, forming an iconic -Rhys woman- whose personality - vulnerable, witty, watchful and angry - was often mistaken, and still is, for a self-portrait.Many details of Rhys-s life emerge from her memoir, Smile Please and the stories she wrote throughout her long and challenging career. But it-s a shock to discover that no biographer - until now - has res