Bettie's Books

bookshelves: spring-2014, biography, under-500-ratings, published-2009, teh-demon-booze, mental-health, books-about-books-and-book-shops, sleazy, london

R4x

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kcr2q

Lets see what Pizzichini has uncovered about this author-of-the-winge.

Description: Pooky Quesnel reads from Lillian Pizzichini's biography of the author Jean Rhys, best known for the 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea.

Episode 1: Jean will one day lead a dramatic and colourful life in Paris, Vienna and London, but life begins for her on the Windward Island of Dominica.

Episode 2: Arriving from the West Indies at the age of 17, Jean is sent to a chilly girls' school in Cambridge.

Episode 3: Jean becomes a chorus girl in Edwardian London and learns about love the hard way.

Episode 4: Now married but still penniless, things start to look up for Jean when she moves to Vienna in 1920.

Episode 5: It is now the 1930s and Jean has become an established writer, but it will be 30 years before she delivers her best-known work.

Flowery rendering made for a squirm-ridden encounter. It didn't help Pizzichini's corner that two superbly written biographies were on my desk at the same time:

The Valley
Wedlock