Jean Rhys /

In her introduction, Howells reviews studies that have approached Rhys variously as a woman writer, a colonial writer, and a modernist; adds support from primary sources; and identifies a "dissident narrative voice" crafted by Rhys from her life as an outsider. Readings of several short stories and the five novels are deftly informed by insights from feminist and modernist criticism, and from Rhys's documentation of her writing career. Yet the real strength of these readings is in Howells's perspective on Rhys as artist, rather than scribe of the autobiography of a passive life a distinction made nicely in the discussion of Good Morning Midnight (1939). Howell rescues Rhys from critical marginalization in much the same way that she posits Rhys rescuing Antoinette Rochester from dumb madness, by placing Rhys in conscious conflict with male-determined literary traditions and sociopolitical conventions. Although it could be argued that the premise is reductive and that the study lacks generalizations throughout and needs a stronger conclusion, Howells's work unfetters the strength of Rhys's work, as did Mary Lou Emery's critically more sophisticated study, Jean Rhys at "World's End": Novels of Colonial and Sexual Exile (CH, May'91), and is recommended for undergraduate libraries.-S. Landon, formerly, Middlebury College