Jean Rhys Books

Tigers are Better-Looking incorporates selections from Jean Rhys's first book of stories, The Left Bank, published in 1927, and later stories written after 1939. In them Rhys encompasses within a few pages both the gaiety and charm of youth and love, and an awareness of all that threatens them. Writing in The New York Times, A. Alvarez has called these stories "extraordinary." The early stories have added value in that they illuminate Jean Rhys's development as a writer. Those written later, when her art was mature, are on the level of her novels and demonstrate that she is one of the most distinguished writers of our time, "the best living English novelist," again to quote Alvarez. The title of this collection comes from the opinion which many of Jean Rhys's characters share, that respectable people are as alarming as tigers, but "tigers are better-looking, aren't they?" It also reflects the astringent humor in her work; an explanation that however sad or even sordid her subject, she is never depressing. --From the book jacket

A collection of sixteen short stories by the author of "Wide Sargasso Sea", "Voyage in the Dark" and "Good Morning, Midnight".

Julia Martin is at the end of her rope in Paris. Once beautiful, she was taken care of by men. Now after leaving her lover, she is running out of luck. A visit to London to see her ailing mother and distrustful sister bring her stark life into full focus.

Jean Rhys's Good Morning Midnight is an unforgettable portrait of a woman bravely confronting loneliness and despair in her quest for self-determination In 1930s Paris, where one cheap hotel room is very like another, a young woman is teaching herself indifference. She has escaped personal tragedy and has come to France to find courage and seek independence. She tells herself to expect nothing, especially not kindness, least of all from men. Tomorrow, she resolves, she will dye her hair blonde. Jean Rhys was a talent before her time with an impressive ability to express the anguish of young women. In Good Morning, Midnight Rhys created the powerfully modern portrait of Sophia Jansen, whose emancipation is far more painful and complicated than she could expect, but whose confession is flecked with triumph and elation. With an introduction by A.L. Kennedy 'Her eloquence in the language of human sexual transactions is chilling, cynical, and surprisingly moving' A.L. Kennedy

'A wonderful bitter-sweet book, written with disarming simplicity' Esther Freud 'It was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known,' says Anna Morgan, eighteen years old and catapulted to England from the West Indies after the death of her beloved father. Working as a chorus girl, Anna drifts into the demi-monde of Edwardian London. But there, dismayed by the unfamiliar cold and greyness, she is absolutely alone and unconsciously floating from innocence to harsh experience. Her childish dreams have been replaced by harsh reality. Voyage in the Dark was first published in 1934, but it could have been written today. It is the story of an unhappy love affair, a portrait of a hypocritical society, and an exploration of exile and breakdown; all written in Jean Rhys's hauntingly simple and beautiful style.

Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent sensuality and beauty. After their marriage the rumours begin, poisoning her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is driven towards madness.

In interwar Paris, Marya is trying to make something of of her life. Alone, her Polish husband in prison, she has been taken up by an English couple who slowly overwhelm her with their passions. The novel was originally published in 1928, under the title Postures.

So there's a good time coming for the ladies, is there?-a good time coming for the girls? About time too' Stories of women adrift in seedy bars and down-at-heel hotels, from a master of the short story form.

Contains such stories as: "La Grosse Fifi", "Vienne", "Tea with an Artist", and "Mixing Cocktails". They are all taken from a selection from The Left Bank in Penguin's edition of "Tigers Are Better Looking".