The Collected Short Stories by Jean Rhys (Norton; 1987, ISBN978-0-393-30625-5)
I discovered Jean Rhys’ writing thanks to Poets and Writers magazine. Someone wrote an article about reading her work. I had never heard of her and became interested in her writing because of her engaging biography (in the larger sense; see below for a review of a biography about her life, The Blue Hour). The article compelled me to read all of her novels, including her masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea, all of which I found intriguing and well-conceived.
This collection of thirty-six stories, from postcard tales of a page in length, to longer works, shows Rhys’ progress as a writer and explores, in written terms, the factual elements of her life as embedded in her fiction. There are, as in any complete compendium of an author’s shorter prose, some real gems and some real stinkers in the group. But even the less appealing stories serve a purpose: they chronicle Jean’s struggles with alcoholism, mental illness, and gender bias in post-Victorian England.
For me, the closer Rhys drifts to her early days on the Caribbean island of Dominica, the truer the writing. All in all, this grouping adds to our appreciation and knowledge of Rhys’ strange and bewitching ability as a fiction writer. 4 stars out of 5.
