Penguin Modern Classics: Tigers Are Better Looking

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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 she 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