I think potentially her other books are indeed more interesting, ecks. I read Wide Sargasso Sea maybe 10 years ago and couldn't get on with it at all, though that may be because I hadn't read Jane Eyre at the time.
But the story of
Wide Sargasso Sea is interesting in itself. Rhys had published four earlier novels and a couple of collections of stories in the 1920s and 30s, and slipped out of public sight and hearing so thoroughly that she was thought to have died. In 1957 an adaptation of her (then) last novel
Good Morning, Midnight was produced for BBC Radio, and this led to people discovering that she was still alive and writing - she had accumulated another collection of stories and was at work on
Wide Sargasso Sea, which was published in 1966, when she was 76 years old. I like in particular two supposed facts about her: that her only comment on her late flowering of success was 'It has come too late'; and that she died reaching for her mascara.
I was drawn to read some of her earlier novels by the fact that they are very short - between 150 and 180 pages - and have enormously handsome covers. Vivid, rich but simple photographs against that ever-seductive Penguin silver base. Like
this. And
this. And
this. Oh and she turned up on an Amazon recommendation - a change from their usual policy of "
We notice you have bought one book by this author - why not try every other book by this author in multiple editions?" I bought the last of her four 'early' novels
Good Morning, Midnight (not so very early, as it was published when she was 49). Like the others, it is highly autobiographical - a young, or as the books progressed, not so young, woman struggles to keep her head above water and alcohol in 1930s Paris or London. Here she adopts the role of Sophia 'Sasha' Jansen, down on her luck and unable to hold down a job, and worst of all, not knowing where her next drink is coming from. She associates with a range of men in a range of bars and takes them back to a range of bedsits, and generally mopes about the place feeling sorry for herself, perhaps with some justification. It sounds dreary, but the writing somehow makes it, well,
sing: almost. A small example from the opening:
'Quite like old times,' the room says. 'Yes? No?'
There are two beds, a big one for madame and a smaller one on the opposite side for monsieur. The wash-basin is shut off by a curtain. It is a large room, the smell of cheap hotels faint, almost imperceptible. The street outside is narrow, cobble-stoned, going sharply uphill and ending in a flight of steps. What they call an impasse.
I have been here five days. I have decided on a place to eat in at midday, a place to eat in at night, a place to have my drink in after dinner. I have arranged my little life.
The book progresses in impressionistic little scenes like this, with or without other people, plotless but seductive. I don't know if the other books are sufficiently varied to make them worth reading, but it'll send me back to
Wide Sargasso Sea for certain; and it's a shame that personal circumstances led her pen to run dry for three decades, though at least her mascara never did.
