[Jean Rhys's life is] a terrible story but an uncommon one in our century, which is more notable for the falls from glory that follow on a too eager appreciation of writers than for the neglect of talent, and it makes the publication of Miss Rhys's autobiography ["Smile Please"] an event of more than ordinary interest. What about this survivor? Who was the woman who wrote those remarkable novels in the first place? For remarkable they were and are—lean, hard, as frightening as they are exact in their quiet statement of emotional desolation.

But more than curiosity about the personal history of so gifted an author, legitimate as that is, is involved in our interest in the life of Jean Rhys. Miss Rhys is an obsessed writer whose novels move scarcely at all beyond their central characters—all of them, despite their altered names, the same woman...