Jean Rhys is usually content to sketch the possibilities of her fictive situation, and the result is anecdote…. (p. ii)

My sense is that the work [in Sleep It Off, Lady] is not so much the material of short fiction as the fragments of several unfinished novels—one about childhood in the West Indies, another about adolescence and early maturity in finishing and dramatic schools, a third about night life in London (including the Battle of Britain), and the last about the rigors of old age.

One of the best of Miss Rhys's stories ("Insect World") contains this line: "Almost any book was better than life." Her characters tend to take that view of reality, and they have the feeling that they are play-acting in a strange world which will soon take on the actuality of their expectations. (p. iv)

George Core, "Wanton Life, Importunate Art," in The...