I’ve just finished reading The Blue Hour by Lilian Pizzichini. Now where are the pills and the whisky? Seriously, this book has received very mixed reviews, from the highest praise to considerable criticism for telling us nothing new, or nothing that can’t be deduced from her novels. I was aware of this when I started – it gave me an advantage.
My verdict on the book is a good one. I enjoyed it, I learnt things, and if you read it, so will you (in my opinion). I had already read Angier’s work, which is different altogether. So when I read the Pizzichini, it was in another way, as a story, as a piece of fiction almost, a telling of a tale. In this way it works.
Jean Rhys had so much talent and she poured it into her work. Reading the books, you might think she’d lived most of her life alone. Not true. She had three husbands and a small but sturdy collection of friends. The tragedy was, they weren’t enough. When I was reading the early pages of the portrait, I felt frustrated with Jean, with her apathy, her self-pity, her reluctance to face the facts of her life and take back control. But that was how she was.
Progressing through the book, my sympathy grew – was that Pizzichini’s intent? Perhaps I was just getting used to Rhys. I’d always been sympathetic when I’d read her novels (autobiographical as they are), then suddenly I found myself less so. And now here I am at the end of the work, sympathetic again. But in a different way. The gloss has been taken off. Jean, however, remains. She is what she is. As are we all.
Read the book – you might enjoy it. Whether you do or not, don’t judge Rhys too harshly. There but for the grace of genes, or history, or courage, go you…
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