Audiobook14 hours
I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys
Written by Miranda Seymour
Narrated by Diana Quick
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
()
About this audiobook
An intimate, profoundly moving biography of Jean Rhys, acclaimed author of Wide Sargasso Sea.
Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. Memories of her Caribbean girlhood haunt the four short and piercingly brilliant novels that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England, a body of fiction-above all, the extraordinary Wide Sargasso Sea-that has a passionate following today. And yet her own colorful life, including her early years on the Caribbean island of Dominica, remains too little explored, until now.
In I Used to Live Here Once, Miranda Seymour sheds new light on the artist whose proud and fiercely solitary life profoundly informed her writing. Rhys experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil, all of which contributed to the "Rhys woman" of her oeuvre. Today, readers still intuitively relate to her unforgettable characters, vulnerable, watchful, and often alarmingly disaster-prone outsiders; women with a different way of moving through the world. And yet, while her works often contain autobiographical material, Rhys herself was never a victim. The figure who emerges for Seymour is cultured, self-mocking, unpredictable-and shockingly contemporary.
Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. Memories of her Caribbean girlhood haunt the four short and piercingly brilliant novels that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England, a body of fiction-above all, the extraordinary Wide Sargasso Sea-that has a passionate following today. And yet her own colorful life, including her early years on the Caribbean island of Dominica, remains too little explored, until now.
In I Used to Live Here Once, Miranda Seymour sheds new light on the artist whose proud and fiercely solitary life profoundly informed her writing. Rhys experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil, all of which contributed to the "Rhys woman" of her oeuvre. Today, readers still intuitively relate to her unforgettable characters, vulnerable, watchful, and often alarmingly disaster-prone outsiders; women with a different way of moving through the world. And yet, while her works often contain autobiographical material, Rhys herself was never a victim. The figure who emerges for Seymour is cultured, self-mocking, unpredictable-and shockingly contemporary.
Author
Miranda Seymour
Miranda Seymour, author of the award-winning In My Father's House has written many acclaimed novels and biographies, including lives of Mary Shelley, Robert Graves, Ottoline Morrell and Helle Nice, the Bugatti Queen.
Related to I Used to Live Here Once
Related audiobooks
The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Independent People Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Awkward Age: Unabridged Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hyacinth Girl: T.S. Eliot's Hidden Muse Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoison Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Writer's Diary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Altar of the Dead Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDebriefing: Collected Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Oscar and Lucinda Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Divorcing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Man Who Saw Everything Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An Experiment in Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Margaret the First: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Awakening Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Every Day Is Mother's Day Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Custom of the Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Things Are Against Us Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Artful Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Friends & Dark Shapes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReal Estate: A Living Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daniel Deronda Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Feud: Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson, and the End of a Beautiful Friendship Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to be both Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Literary Biographies For You
Shakespeare Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil and Harper Lee Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Deliberate Cruelty: Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dad on Pills: Fatherhood and Mental Illness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Marriage Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Intelligence for Dummies: Essays and Other Collected Writings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Angela's Ashes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Papillon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Moveable Feast Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lit: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Professor and The Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lives of the Wives: Five Literary Marriages Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chronicles: Volume One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Murder Your Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Roughing It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for I Used to Live Here Once
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings
0 ratings0 reviews