Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys (1890 1979) is best known for her 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea. A prequel to Jane Eyre, Rhys's revolutionary work reimagined the story of Bertha Rochester the misunderstood madwoman in the attic who was driven to insanity by cruelties beyond her control. The Blue Hour performs a similar exhumation of Rhys's life, which was haunted by demons from within and without. Its examination of Rhys s pain and loss charts her desperate journey from the jungles of Dominica to a British boarding school, and then into an adult life scarred by three failed marriages, the deaths of her two children, and her long battle with alcoholism. A mesmerizing evocation of a fragile and brilliant mind, The Blue Hour explores the crucial element that ultimately spared Rhys from the fate of her most famous protagonist: a genius that rescued her, again and again, from the abyss.

Author: Lilian Pizzichini
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 05/01/2009
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.80w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780393058031

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 12/15/2008 pg. 96
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2009
Publishers Weekly 02/16/2009 pg. 123
Booklist 03/01/2009 pg. 14
Library Journal 04/15/2009 pg. 92
New York Times Book Review 07/19/2009 pg. 19
Choice 10/01/2009

About the Author
Pizzichini, Lilian: - British biographer Lilian Pizzichini has worked for the Literary Review and the Times Literary Supplement.