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Aug 24, 1890 — May 14, 1979· 88 yrs

DOMINICA AUTHOR · FICTION · GENERAL

Jean Rhys

Also known as: Jean Rhys, Rui Si (Rhys, Jean, 1894-1979)

22
BOOKS
3.8
AVG RATING (21)
8
READERS

Jean Rhys, born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams in 1890, was a 20th-century novelist and writer of short stories. Born and raised on the Caribbean island of Dominica, she moved to England at age 16, became a chorus girl, and embarked on the life of a demimondaine there and in Europe. Her deep sense of being an outsider -- the descendant of white colonialists in the Caribbean, then a Creole in England -- never left her and deeply informed her work. Rhys's evocative sketches in the 1920s caught the eye, and briefly earned the patronage, of Ford Madox Ford (her fraught relationship with him is explored in her debut novel, Quartet ). She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which examined the character of Bertha Rochester (in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre) from a different angle.

Roseau, Dominica
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IT was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known.

— from Voyage in the Dark, 2002

Most acclaimed

#2

Good Morning, Midnight

3.0 (1)

Augustine, a brilliant, aging astronomer, refuses to abandon the research center in the Arctic when he receives news of a catastrophic event. Soon after, he discovers a mysterious child and realizes that the airwaves have gone silent. They are alone. Meanwhile, Mission Specialist Sullivan and her crew, the first astronauts to delve into deep space, discover that Mission Control is no longer on the air. Sullivan's career has cost her her marriage, and she has left her daughter behind. Will she ever get home? As Augustine and Sully face the uncertain future, their stories gradually intertwine towards a profound and unexpected conclusion, which raises questions: What endures at the end of the world? How do we make sense of our lives? A captivating meditation on the power of love and the bravery of the human heart. --

#1

The Collected Short Stories

1997

0.0 (0)

"Dermot Healy wrote intricate and innovative short stories that, along with works by Neil Jordan and Desmond Hogan, relaunched the Irish short story tradition. Set in small-town Ireland and the equally suffocating confines of the Irish expat communities of 1970s London, Healy's stories show compassion toward the marginalized and the dispossessed. Gathering all of Healy's stories together for the first time, this collection includes the long prose-drama "Before the Off" and Healy's final short works, "Along the Lines" and "Images"--

#3

Voyage in the Dark

2002

0.0 (0)

A haunting semi-autobiographical novel about a young woman from the Caribbean adrift in England.

Books

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