After Leaving Mr Mackenzie

Description

A brilliant, yet brutal, portrait of a woman struggling to retrieve both life and love For six months, Julia has lived alone in a drab Parisian hotel on an allowance from her ex-lover, Mr. Mackenzie. When his cheques stop, Julia decides to leave France and return to London. The tale of her ten day visit contains some of Jean Rhys's most sensitive, poignant writing. Past her prime, exhausted by broken love affairs and addled by drink, Julia is tragically unable to find what she really wants - love.

Jean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1894. After arriving in England aged sixteen, she became a chorus girl and drifted between different jobs before moving to Paris, where she started to write in the late 1920s. She published a story collection and four novels, after which she disappeared from view and lived reclusively for many years. In 1966 she made a sensational comeback with her masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea, written in difficult circumstances over a long period. Rhys died in 1979.

It is a book that does not invite comparisons. . . . Its excellence is individual, intrinsic; it measures itself against itself * Saturday Review of Literature * She had an ability to see what others could not, or refused to see, and the guts to write about it -- Christine Pountney * Guardian *