Backlisted - Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys - rerun

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

This is the third in our re-released episodes – and only the second one we ever recorded. Has Jean Rhys’s reputation and influence grown since then? Does a seven-year-old Backlisted still pass muster? All this (and more) are considered in Andy’s new introduction. Enjoy! John and Andy are joined by novelist Linda Grant and Unbound's Mathew Clayton to discuss Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys, first published in 1939. Rhys is still best known for her 1966 novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, but as well as making a strong case for her earlier work, there is a lively discussion of perfume, the previously unheard-of genre of Scandinavian magic realism, and Andy spots a mistake in the best selling science book of all time. Timings: (may differ due to adverts) 1'49 - A Winter Book by Tove Jansson 9'46 - A Brief History of Time by Prof Stephen Hawking 17'30 - Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm * If you'd like to support the show, receive the show early and get extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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See in-store for details. Hi, everyone. It's Andy Miller here, co-host of the Backlisted podcast, with another episode from our archive. I've been writing at length about Jean Rees for my next book, which I hope will be published next year. And to that end, I have been revisiting her novels, which I love and which are a source of inspiration to me. My favourite of these remains her fourth, Good Morning Midnight, first published in 1939 and, not coincidentally,

the subject of this episode of Backlisted, only the second we made, sitting around the kitchen table of Unbound's old offices in Buckingham Gate in London. It's been interesting to listen to this recording from back in 2015 for several reasons. Firstly, it is my impression that Rhys' stock has risen in the seven years since we made this show. I see her influence everywhere in contemporary fiction, and recently I've taken part in several events with Miranda Seymour, the author of a fine new biography of Rees entitled I Used to Live Here Once. Audiences have been both

enthusiastic and large in number. It's amazing to think a hundred people will turn out on a chilly Friday night in February in Kent to learn more about a writer whose books were so unpopular in her lifetime she was believed to have died some 40 years before she actually did so. in her lifetime, she was believed to have died some 40 years before she actually did so. As Rees herself said on receipt of the W.H. Smith Prize for Wide Sargasso Sea, it has come too late. Secondly, the analysis of Rees's work offered here by our guest Linda Grant remains relevant, insightful and important. Jean Rees was nobody's pet and her work transcends whatever labels we may be tempted to place on it. Finally, it is both pleasing and slightly alarming that this episode is so good, not my words, but those of our current producer, Nicky Birch.

but those of our current producer, Nicky Birch. I think you can hear how delighted John and I are that this thing, and remember, this is only the second time we'd ever got together to make one of these, that this thing is working. There's a real sense of enjoyment, discovery, and passion in our discussion, which are all the things we hope Batlisted continues to deliver. This episode was produced by our original producer Matt Hall and features Matthew Clayton, who was with us for the first year or so of Batlisted and is very much therefore the Michael Bentine of our Goon Show. I will leave listeners to decide which members of the current team are Spike Milligan, Harry Seacombe or Peter Sellers.

Anyway, thank you for listening. Let's now return to the Paris of 1935 and the London of 2015. And I will leave you with the epigraph of Rees's novel, Good Morning Midnight, taken by her from the work of Emily Dickinson. Good morning, midnight. I'm coming home. Day got tired of me. How could I of him?

Sunshine was a sweet place I liked to stay. But morn didn't want me. Now, so goodnight, day When we look at the clock He's my favourite person in the world Why not? I have a photograph of him Really?

Yeah, do you want to see a picture of him? I'd love that. You should make him your avatar on Twitter. That would really... Look, there he is. Look at him just relaxing. What was it, 6-1 against Southampton? Yeah, when they said to him,

is it true you've had a hair transplant? He said, yeah, I think it looks really stylish. He's just shameless. And then he said somebody else, some other manager had said, I play football as poetry. And he said, I play football as N.V. Meckle. Absolutely brilliant. He's fantastic.

I love him. And all the Liverpool fans completely adore him. And look at the results. Yes, I know. Absolutely brilliant. He's fantastic. I love him. And all the Liverpool fans completely adore him. And look at the results. Yes, I know. I know. Love him. Love him. Hello, and welcome to Backlisted, the new podcast where old books get a new life. I'm John Mitchinson, and we're coming to you live from the kitchen table of Unbound, the website where readers and writers come together

to produce great books. And I'm Andy Miller. I'm the author of the year of reading dangerously. We are the levis and butthead of reading as every week. It's up to you to decide which is which. And we're also going to be joined in the Baldrick role today by Mr. Matthew Clayton. Hello, Matthew. Good evening, everyone. the Baldrick role today by Mr Matthew Clayton. Hello Matthew. Good evening everyone. And later on we're going to be joined by Linda Grant to talk about Jean Rees and specifically Jean Rees's novel Good Morning Midnight but first as is traditional on Backlisted. John what have you been reading? I've had a lovely week Andy. I've had a week of deliciousness. It gets to this time of year, and for those of you who are listening, in September 2019, I'm actually talking to you in December 2015.

And at a certain point of the year, you just want a book that is full of cold. I wanted a book that was full of coldness and bleached wood and the sound of the sea on pebbles and just something that made me feel wintry. And I wondered, a couple of weeks ago, I picked up Tove Hansen. I say Tove because I don't know how. Tove. Let me stop you there.

Let me stop you there. I was informed by the great Will Grozier a couple of days ago that he's Tove, as in Duve. Tove Jansson. Tove Jansson. Yeah. Well, I was reading Tove Jansson's The Winter Book, which is just a beautiful, almost a perfect collection of stories.

I selected my Ali Smith, the great Ali Smith. And I just felt like I've – it's an amazing thing. It's a collection of stories which almost functions like an autobiography. I mean, it's fictional, but the stories themselves are kind of cumulative and they go through a – mean it starts with very small child and ends with an old woman railing against the the the kind of the world uh there's a fantastic story towards the end of the book about a squirrel which she befriends and um it's it's it's one of

those again it's that thing about when you sometimes just need comfort reading yes but strangely um and if i had the copy in front of me, but I'd left it on the tube, I would be able to read magnificent passages of loveliness. They are drawn. The stories in the Winter Book are chronological, aren't they? And they're drawn from different points in her career. So she wrote several volumes of short stories,

not all of which have been translated into English yet. Is it a book for adults or children? It's a book for adults, yeah. I mean, the thing about Tuve, because I was getting used to it. You have to say Tuve Jansson. Is that I loved the, of course, she's most famous for writing the Moomin Troll books and the Moomin books. And I loved the Moomin books as a child, particularly the later ones,

Moominpappa at Sea and Moominvalley in November. And I took the liberty of writing down, this is the opening of Moominpappa at Sea and Moominvalley in November and I took the liberty of writing down this is the opening of Moominpappa at Sea this is a book supposedly for children it starts one afternoon at the end of August Moominpappa was walking about in his garden feeling at a loss he had no idea what to do with himself because it seemed everything there was to be done had already been done or was being done by somebody else and i only as an adult when i read it it's a book about a midlife crisis so one of the weird things is that as we'll see when we get to talk about gene reese later i hadn't planned it this way but there's a weird resonance in that strange kind of slightly dislocated narrative voice that Tove Janssen has,

which kind of does sort of fit with the Jean Rees, certainly the Jean Rees that we're going to talk about later. I very much, the thing that I loved about her books as a child, which I still like about her work as an adult, either her writing for children or for adults, is that unsentimental mixture of humour and melancholy and emotional realism, all of which you would find actually in Jean Rees, without talking about Jean Rees too quickly.

Also, but the amazing, mad explosions of total invention. So one of the first stories in the book is about a child rolling a stone, which is made from silver, rolling and rolling. And it's very, very intense. And in the end, she drops the stone and the stone explodes and covers the whole of the neighbourhood in silver. That silver plates the neighbourhood. The story is amazing. I agree.

It's just kind of Nordic magic realism. I mean, hitherto undiscovered, unthought of, unremarked upon kind of genre. And I thought, how do you get you get i mean in my own case how do i get to 52 and only discover curvy nonsense i mean when the moomin trolls we grew up with them yeah yeah i was reading about her this week apparently moomin troll uh moominpappa at sea and moominvalley in november were published in finnish as adult. It's only in this country that they were published as children's books because she wanted to approach adult themes using characters that she had invented for children.

But don't you think that was to do with the illustrations, which kind of put them firmly in there, which is an interesting thing. I guess it's a bit like Roald Dahl. I mean, you could publish Matilda almost as an adult book if you didn't have Quentin Blake's drawings. I've been reading some of her adult books this year. The Summer Book, which is a classic, really. The True Deceiver, and one called Sun City.

The second novel that she wrote in English called Sun City. It's set in Florida. I had to buy aopy from a Florida library. It's incredibly rare. And I'd like to issue a public appeal to sort of books who had done a brilliant job republishing her in the last 10 years, but have thus far ignored this book because presumably it's insufficiently Scandinavian. But it's absolutely wonderful I mean it is it to see early 70s America and the life of old people in early 70s America through the eyes

of somebody from a totally different world is really uh remarkable it's terrific book actually I thought it was going to be a chorus skating kind of a attack on south african casinos during the apartment it's just coincidental it's just a coincidence can i give it i mean it's really this is a cheesy marketing line because as andy knows i i can't resist a cheesy marketing line but if lyra balacqua ever wrote short stories. They would read a lot like, I think, the stories in Turve Janssen's winter book and indeed the summer book. She's just, it's fantastically, they're just odd, aren't they?

In the same way, and we'll come on to Jean Rees, there's that sort of, that thing about writers who are odd. How do you do that? I mean, you try to be odd, but if you're really, it's that thing you read who are odd how do you do that i mean you try to be odd but there's that if you're really it's that thing you read a sentence in a sense i mean as i say the book is now somewhere on the circle line i think but a lucky person is going to pick that up i'd like to also take the opportunity to recommend to all adult readers moomin valley in november which i

reread quite recently that's like a bergman. It's like a children's book about absence. There are no Moomins in it. All the animals arrive and all the Moomins have gone. You're right to bring that up because when I think about these, reading these stories, I'm reminded of early Bergman, Summer with Monica. Yes. That kind of amazing, strange, weird thing that basically it's shit.

The winter is shit. And then the summer is incredibly intense. And then there's a shit witch. And you do get that sort of feeling. But a lot of the stories in the winter book are about darkness and snow and ice and coldness. But there's also wonderful things about it's a brilliant story about her dad having a party and the mum not involving herself in the party but the dad is basically just her dad brings a bunch of drunk mate rounds mates around and they have a play on

the balalaika and they have a they have a hooli and the mum's job is to not interfere but to make sure there's plenty of pickled herring in the fridge so they can refresh themselves at various times. It's about as joyful as it gets. What are you reading this week, Danny? I have been reading, successfully from cover to cover, A Brief History of Time by Professor Stephen Hawking. Yes, I think that's absolutely deserved. Thank you. Professor Stephen Hawking.

Yes, I think that's utterly deserved. Thank you. Which is right up there, if I'm not wrong, along with 1984 as the most talked about least read book of all time. 1984? Apparently that's the book that most people lie about having read. Is it really? Can I tell you a terrible, terrible, dark secret? I have never read 1984.

I've talked about it. I've just never read it. It didn't come up. I've read it for you. I've talked about it. I've just never read it. It didn't come up. I've read it for you. I've read it so many times. Linda Grant is looking at me with such disdain. I'm just being a disappointment. I've read pretty much everything else that Orwell ever wrote.

I mean, I've read all of the other shit novels. The Nother Hitch. You know, Aspidist. Keep the Aspidist flying. You're too good. Nother Hitch. I don't know why I didn't read it. It's just I'd always felt it was sort of... John liked his early B-sides,

and then after he started that... Not much, actually. What I love... What everybody loves as Orwell is the essays, which are beyond compare. But Coming Up For Air... I like Coming Up For Air. Yeah, it's all right.

Anyway... That's another podcast, by the way. Anyway so brief history of time i was challenged to read a brief history of time by a friend of mine uh who i've known for 30 years who said to me look down a list of books that i was planning to read and he said but these are all fiction andy these are all fiction why don't you read any non-? My friend, he's a maths prodigy. He loves maths. And he said, you've got a brief history of time on here. And until he challenged me to read it, to be honest with you, although it was on my to-read list, I had no real plans to read it. But I thought, well, I'll give it a go. No real plans. No real plans to read it, yeah. But I did read it, and i found it quite tough going famously chewy yeah

famously it's a book more started than finished uh isn't it and i had to read several chapters three times particularly the bits about quantum mechanics and imaginary numbers but i did find it very enlightening and it was really good to see how all those terms that you've heard of like black hole and event horizon and string theory and uncertainty principle, et cetera, fit together. Though, please don't ask me now on the spot to explain to you how they do fit together. Obviously, I can't do that.

Because I obviously, knowing you were reading it, I had to dig it up again. I've not read it, I'll be honest. I mean, I've read. I've skimmed it this week. It's a lot thinner as well. I'm sure the last I had was about double the thickness. No, it's actually got slightly longer.

But this is a slightly, you know, personal thing. But do you remember that John Gray, do you remember the guy who used to run the Waterstones in Aberdeen? Yes. He was single-handedly responsible for making this book a bestseller. He read it and he was, I think, a bit of a maths geek and kind of went mental for it in Aberdeen. I mean, bought like 200 copies and they all sold.

And then, I mean, it seems like the least likely word of mouth book you could possibly imagine. But that's sort of what it became. And of course, the problem with it is, I mean, it is, I have to say, I found it weirdly less forbidding than I'd expected it to. Yeah. But I still, if you say to me string theory, I'm going to struggle to say. Yeah, want to sleep.

I'm going to struggle to say it succinctly and interestingly. Yes, yes. Although there are lots of little, there are wonderful little moments in it, I think, just, you know, the whole black hole thing is so gorgeous. I realised I'd like. Of a universe that's sort of consuming itself. I love that. And where does it go?

Where does all the stuff go? Where is the universe? Where's the outside? Where are all this stuff? Where does it go when it's not in the universe? Which he kind of glosses over, let's be honest. I realised I'd like 40 years of prep before reading this book because most of the concepts were familiar to me via

40 years of reading Douglas Adams and watching Doctor Who and Star Trek and films called The Black Hole and Event Horizon and what I don't know about the general theory of relativity I do make up for with a solid foundation in crappy 70s and 80s sci-fi, right? And on that basis, the real revelation for me when reading A Brief History of Time was that I found a mistake. No, God. I found a mistake in A Brief History of Time, a book which has been in print for 25 years and has sold in excess of 10 million copies, right?

I am going to read you the erroneous passage and i'm going to ask you to tell me what's wrong with it okay erroneous here we go coming up the other possible way to resolve the paradoxes of time travel might be called the alternative histories hypothesis the idea here is that when time travellers go back to the past, they enter alternative histories which differ from recorded history. Thus, they can act freely without the constraint of consistency with their previous history. Steven Spielberg had fun with this notion in the Back to the Future films. Marty McFly was able to go back and change his parents' courtship to a more satisfactory history. What is the schoolboy era there?

It was directed by a person other than Stephen Spielberg. Absolutely. Back to the Future was written and directed by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. Zemeckis, yeah. And Stephen Spielberg was involved. He was the executive producer, but it would be a bit like attributing the success of A Brief History of Time to the finance director of its publisher, Bantam Books, rather than its author, Professor Stephen Hawking. And one of the other things I learned about A Brief History of Time while reading it is that Professor Hawking is not the kind of chap who would let an error like that go easily. easily. Now, the first question that struck me is why has nobody spotted that mistake in a brief history of time over the last 25 years, which sold 10 million copies? Well,

clearly one, it's not what the book's about. And so some might argue it doesn't matter. I wouldn't argue that, but some might say that. But secondly, also it's on page 183, isn't it? Quite near the end of the book, suggesting the end of the book has indeed not been read that frequently. And there's also in that paragraph, a grammatical error in there, which suggests that even the proofreader didn't make it as far as page 183 of A Brief History of Time. It's all circumstantial evidence. I can't prove it. Finally, the last thing I want to say about A Brief History of Time is I really loved Professor Hawking's author biography, presumably self-penned at the back of the book, which starts with the line, Stephen Hawking was born in Oxford in 1942, exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo. Just pluck that fact out of the air. That's a bit like me saying Andy Miller was born in Croydon in 1968,

six years after Marvel Comics published the first issue of The Incredible Hulk, as though it were just a naturally flowing fact. Is that true? It is true. I researched it. At the point being, Professor Hawking threw out the book to his great, he's a very, very clever man. But he's very, very keen to place himself in the lineage of Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and Professor Hawking.

You know what? I'm really pleased to have read it. It is very much a horrible phrase outside my comfort zone, but it is very much outside my comfort zone. And yet I did find… He does write really well. Yeah, he writes really well. And also it's good for your brain to be pushed a bit and struggle to get your head around things

you wouldn't normally get your head around. So I'm very pleased to have read it. Okay, it's time now for an advert. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a world away? You can use your travel credit. Squeezing every drop out of the last day? How about a 4 p.m. late checkout? Just need a nice place to settle in? Enjoy a room upgrade. Wherever you go, we'll go together. That's the powerful backing of American Express.

Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card. Terms apply. Sandy. Yes. You're on a desert island and you have a choice between A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and Good Morning Midnight by Jean Rees. Which would you go for? I think it's obvious.

I think it's obvious to anyone listening that I and everyone gathered here would choose Jean Rees including our guest today, Linda Grant. Hello, Linda. Hello. Thank you for coming in. I would not choose Jean Rees to be alone with on a day like this. Unless you brought something to drink, actually.

Linda, author of novels such as The Clothes on Their Back and most recently Upstairs at the Party, as well as a short book, which I would just like to talk a little bit about first, called I Murdered My Library, which is an account of Kindle Single. How you disposed of a lifetime's previous one and I didn't have room for all my books and I had to have a massive painful traumatic clear out and one of the things which was you imagine that you know you're building this library and that in your old age you will reread these books and in fact I you know I do reread But when I got down off the shelf my 1970s paperbacks of, I have the complete works of Dickens, Penguin editions, you open them, the pages sort of smelt, you know, of cheap paper and bad ink. And they fell out because the glue had perished.

And I couldn't read them because, yeah, and couldn't read them because the writing was too small, the typeface was too small. So I was sort of throwing them, throwing them, throwing them. And people asked me, you know, did you get, you know, do you send them to a book dealer? Nobody is interested. Nobody is interested in 1970s paperbacks. The next generation doesn't read, they're not interested. The book dealers are not interested. There were no first editions. There was nothing like that because I didn't buy first editions. I bought paperbacks. So it was very, very traumatic. But I have to say, my entire collection of Jean Rees did survive the cut and the one which I have in front of me is dated as we used to do rather pretentiously in those days August 1980 so that was when I was reading Jean Rees in the 70s late 70s. You were saying to me a little bit

earlier on that you read all of her novels in in quick succession back then yeah white sargasso c was published in the 60s i think i remember they had that in the school library and that was the first time i'd heard of her and i read that and then they they republished penguin republished all the paris novels and i must have been in my late 20s when I and everybody else I know read all of Jean Rees. And I I've been trying to figure out why it was that in this kind of great feminist phase of our lives, we thought for reasons which are now completely opaque to me that that she was some kind of great feminist discovery, because she is not. She's not a sister, is she?

She's not a sister. I mean, she is the writer which I cherish. Of 20th century writers, she is the writer I cherish the most. Having said that, I haven't actually reread her, because, as the writer Susan Hill said, you can't read two in succession because you'd commit suicide. indescribably painful because what they're actually telling you is we were in our 20s, it was the 70s, we were absolutely arrogantly self-confident in our ability to change the world, have as much sex as we wanted, to smoke as much dope as we wanted, to do anything we wanted, to smoke as much dope as we wanted, to do anything we wanted, to be anything we wanted.

And then you have this series of very, very short novels about women who are 15, 20 years older than you, who are sitting in a room drinking themselves to death. And it was, I think, the first intimation to us that we were not immortal, that we were not young and going to stay young forever. So she was a kind of terrifying and corrosive and eye-opening read back then. rereading her now what struck me about her is that the you know i remember when i was reading her at the time thinking why don't you get a job you know get a job the g-rease heroine you know does not get a job if she can help it so what she does the most annoying girl she's she's that thing i just that's the thing i was reading good night minerva which i never read before which is brilliant good morning but it's that thing is oh my god just just just you're so smart and you're

so beautiful and you're so difficult just be less difficult can i just can i just give do a quick recap of gene reese's life because it's germane to what we're talking about clearly gene reese born 1890 in dominica in the west indies died 1979 in devon england aged 88 published a book of short stories in 1927 called the left bank with a big introduction from her editor and lover ford maddox ford and then she in the late 20s into the late 30s she published four novels postures which became quartet subsequently in 1931 after leaving mr mckenzie 1934 voyage in the dark the Dark, 1939, Good Morning, Midnight. Each of those novels in commercial terms was progressively less successful than the previous one. And after the publication of Good Morning, Midnight, which kind of disappeared, so did Jean Rees.

And for many years, it was believed that many people thought that she was dead she moved to uh Devon and vanished and uh her books all fell out of print and um in 1955 she in 19 from 1955 to 1960 she lived in Bude in Cornwall which she referred to in letters as Bude the Obscure and then she moved to a village in Devon called Sheraton Fitzpain which she described as quote a dull spot

which even drink can't enliven much and while she was living there she was accused of being a witch and was shunned by most of the village I found this quote from the chairman of the cheriton fitzpain parish council who in 2010 was asked how he felt about gene referring to cheriton pits fitzpain as a dull spot which even drink can't enliven much and he responded by saying there's always something going on

it's exceptionally friendly there's football cricket darts and skitt, there's always something going on. It's exceptionally friendly. There's football, cricket, darts and skittles. There's a drama club, a WI and a church. He added, we barely knew Jean because she kept herself to herself quite a lot. in obscurity for many, many years. And then thanks to Francis Wyndham and Diana Athill, they coax the novel Wide Sargasso Sea out of her, which she spends years writing, 17, maybe even 20 years. And we have a little clip here of Jean Rees being interviewed at the end of her life after she had finally achieved great success with Wide Sog S.O.C., which won prizes and is widely agreed to be a classic. And here she is talking, I think, in her interview with the Paris Review,

talking a little bit about how it felt to write and live the life of a writer. When I was excited about life, I didn't want to write at all. I've never written about being happy, never. I didn't want to. Besides, I don't think you can describe being happy. I've never had a long period of being happy. Do you think anybody has? period of being happy. Do you think anybody has? I think you can be peaceful for quite a long time, but to be happy is different, isn't it? That's a bit rare, I can't have

feeling. But then altogether, I think, well, I think if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than right. If I had my life all over again and could choose. I'm just going to read now the synopsis on the back cover of Linda's coffee of Good Morning Midnight. Can anyone imagine this getting through a marketing meeting today here we go here we go this isn't so you you're in the station bookstore you're looking for something to read here we go back in paris for a quiet sane fortnight sasha jensen has just been rescued by a friend from drinking herself to death in a Bloomsbury bedsitter. Despite a transformation act, new clothes, and a blonde, sundry hair dye, Sasha still feels, quote,

not quite as good as new, unquote. Streets, shops, and bars vividly evoke her Paris pass, feckless husband Eno, her dead baby, sundry humiliations in abject jobs. One night, a gigolo mistakes Sasha for a rich woman. She still has her fur coat, and their subsequent liaison somehow distills the essence of all that has gone before. I mean, the thing is

that makes this book sound relentlessly miserable. I don't think it is relentlessly miserable, is it, Linda? It's quite funny. Yeah, it is relentlessly miserable, is it, Linda? It's quite funny. Yeah, it is. In a dark way. Yes, it is.

I mean, the thing about the Jean Rhys heroine of those Paris novels is they're all kind of pretty much the same. They get progressively older. And I remember thinking when I was reading them, they were a bit like what would happen if Jane Austen characters were sort of suddenly moved forwards into the 20th century and were trying to survive economically. That's so brilliant. And what happens to the Jean Rees character? The Jean Rees characters in all these novels,

we might think of them as being autobiographical. None of them are artists. There is no sense whatsoever that any of these people are writers. They are not writers. They're women who have fallen off the edge of what is the life that women are supposed to lead. So what they do is they sit in a bedsit, waiting for an ex lover to send them a check, so they can go and buy a dress to be

presentable enough to go and sit in a cafe to be picked up by a man who will support them financially. picked up by a man who will support them financially. So they live in this kind of world of incredible economic precariousness. And because, you know, there's no sense of these women having any form of career, which is, I think, why we found it so strange in the 70s as young feminists, that what they do is because of the dependence on men, the jobs, the only jobs they could get kind of, you know, jobs in a cafe, jobs in a shop, and she hasn't got, she can't pull it off. She hasn't got the kind of work ethic. So of course, what happens every single time is

prostitution. And so the great insight about these novels is how women can fall into prostitution because of this world of dependence of men. And they're terrifying, absolutely terrifying. But also, sorry, you wound me up and I'm going here. No, you guys got me. I'm absolutely brilliant at it. Well, every Jean Rees heroine is absolute heroine character is absolutely obsessed with is clothes, right?

Clothes are utterly important. So she spends this money on having this blonde, saunter ash blonde hair. She's got a mink. She's always talking about her necessity for clothes. But there is this sense of these women being absolutely flayed. She lives for this world of, you know, the feminine, the kind of, you know, the female stereotype.

And beneath it, there is this always a strong sense of not fitting in. And there's a little passage here in which he says this is my attitude to life please please monsieur madame mr mrs and miss i'm trying so hard to be like you i know i don't succeed but look how hard i try three hours to choose a hat every morning an hour and a half trying to make myself look like everybody else every word i say has chains around its ankles every thought i think is weighted with heavy weights it's absolutely extraordinary stuff i know i don't succeed but look how hard i try yeah i mean that's one of the things that i think is incredible about her writing, incredible about this book, is how quotable it is.

I wrote down some of the quotes here. I'll just read a couple of them here. A room is a place where you hide from the wolves outside, and that's all any room is. And one day the fierce wolf that walks by my side will spring on you and rip your abominable guts out. And I no longer wish to be loved beautiful happy or successful i want one thing and one thing only to be left alone it's so beautiful and kind of self-dramatizing but but i would like to the only thing i'm going to respond to what linda was saying slightly is that although the characters the gene reese character as we call

her although they aren't writers their occupations are things that gene reese did yes yeah you know mannequin mannequin uh showgirl a prostitute and there's a gene reese did all those wonderful scene early in the book where she gets sacked for you know basically just being herself you know it's just just being herself. Well, being herself, and this is the thing that Jean said. She specifically said in an interview, I write about myself because that's all I really know. So the writing is extracted, I agree, but the interiority,

horrible word again, I apologise, but the interiority of those characters,'re all gene aren't they yes they i think they are all the interiority of them is all gene um but you know i think so many you know i think so many writers would have done this as i am a frustrated artist you know and she doesn't do that at all i mean i think that one of the the important aspects of her is the fact that she came from this very, very strange background, which is as an Anglo in the Caribbean. So when you read White Sox Association, she's actually racist, but she comes to Europe and she experiences the coldness, the coldness of the climate, but experiences the coldness, the coldness of the climate, but also the coldness of the people.

But she doesn't really belong in the Caribbean. And she feels that she doesn't belong in the Caribbean, but she doesn't belong here either. And so this powerful sense of alienation is running through absolutely everything. And in a way, she's alienated from the human race. And what she wants is love. She wants to be loved.

She just, that is all she wants. That's the thing for me that made, I mean, not having read it before, it's a total revelation. And it's just every, you know, I'm going to read them all now because I just want that voice. And there's just little things. I've never read anyone who captures that sense of the desire for self-improvement and at the same time the undermining of that.

You know, it's like she's – so I love this. The thing is to have a program, not to leave anything to chance, no gaps, no trailing around aimlessly with cheap gramophone records starting up in your head. No, here this happened, here that happened. Above all, no crying in public, no crying at all, if you can help it. And of course, the book is basically just punctuated with her crying at various... I mean, there's something wonderful about that sense of being inside somebody's head and you know that she doesn't want to do i've never really quite read anyone

who's done that interior she's like she's as believable like somebody talking to themselves you know that's one of the wonderful things about about the book and also that she has a kind of you know why do such terrible things happen answer because i expect create and deserve things happen answer because i expect create and deserve she wants she can't be free of her own sense of anger self-persecution but kind of despair but humor at the despair but it's a kind of goes round and round you know instinct for self-preservation she has no instinct for self-preservation whatsoever you know there is no common sense there there's never any common sense she's reckless i mean she buys a painting when she hasn't got any money she gives yeah gigolo you know her money she she's crazy you know she's crazy and you want to give her a shake

isn't it an amazing thing is that somehow you care about the journey. I mean, it's like, you know, you think, who is this? It ought to be depressing, but it isn't. Because the language is so precise. Yes, the language is incredibly spare. We should say that. Yes, I want to talk about the language. Here we go. I have no pride, no pride, no name, no face, no country.

I don't belong anywhere. sad too sad it doesn't matter there i am like one of those straws which floats around the edge of a whirlpool and is gradually sucked into the center the dead center where everything is stagnant and everything is calm that's that beautiful it's just so great. Punch the air brilliant, isn't it? It's just for that sense of somebody whose life is, she doesn't, there's no volition there. Linda, you were going to say about the style in which she writes, it's incredibly pared back and restrained.

It's very pared back. It's very simple. There are no linguistic fireworks going on there at all. There's not a great deal of there is some descriptive writing, but she does something. She does something which I find I can't understand what it is she's doing because you read page, page, page. And then she says there's one sentence and your stomach flips and you think she has prepared the ground here absolutely pages and pages have prepared you for one sentence which is not doing anything showy or flashy but it's like a punch to the stomach i like i i take it around the wrist of the dead baby

oh yeah i would like to say that i my experience of reading these books is obviously very different to linda's because i jean reese is my favorite writer that i've discovered in the last 10 years i read wide sock assoc about 10 years ago and i thought it was fantastic it's fantastic no it's a classic as i said earlier but several years after that i then i think i read after leaving mr mckenzie and shortly after reading after mr mckenzie i read a book of short stories tigers are better looking tigers better than currently out of print penguin books if you're listening bring it back and i felt a very strong sense oh oh this is this is like all those grahamene and Patrick Hamilton books that I've read and loved. But wait a minute, it's – and Malcolm Lowry. But wait a minute, it's written in the 1930s. They're written by a woman. And the literary quality of them, with all due respect to three of my favourite authors, Greene, lots of Lowry, and most of Hamilton.

The sheer literary quality in the way that Linda was just talking about is way above that. I struggle to see, and I say that reading them here in the 21st century, they seem incredibly modern to me, and the sensibility seems very modern. They must have been perplexing in the extreme in the 1930s. If you're reading this in 1939, it's what you've seen. I have to say, again, pleasure. The pleasure thing about reading is to find a voice that is that absolutely clear.

I mean, it's so rare. I mean, you know, I think now I could pick up a book randomly by anybody and spot a Jean Rees. I mean, she's that good and that quick at getting that sensibility. Linda, you were saying on Twitter, you said a brilliant thing about what it's like to read Jean Rees now. Yes. Well, if what you demand from fiction, which is now heavily demanded from Amazon reviews and Goodreads reviews, and particularly good group book groups is likable characters, you are not going to find any likable characters in Jean Rees. going to find any likable characters in Jean Rees and you know as such there is no one more bracingly literally serious not relatable in the like but with certain with serious misgivings I mean sort of like yeah not relatable um not relatable at all know, this demand to soften the novel by requiring that it be likable characters, and this is an even worse expression, that I can root for, you know,

which is apparently a phrase which originates with Kurt Vonnegut, which I can never forgive him for. I only found this out quite recently. I don't think he probably meant it quite as. Well, apparently he had some rules for writing and one of them was character and there must be at least one character that you can root for i mean are we rooting for sasha i mean not really you're not really rooting you're just looking with your hands like yes your eyes going oh my god i'm watching a car crash but the

truthfulness of it that's the thing that right. It's truthful. Yeah, yeah. It's absolutely truthful. Matthew and I had a water cooler conversation earlier in the week, and he said, pretty fucking depressing. Hey, Linda, you said you hadn't reread this book since the 70s. Yeah. Was it as good as you remembered it? Was it better than you remembered it?

I think that it didn't have the effect on me that it had when I was in my 20s, which was entirely a personal subjective one, which was terror. you know you probably they probably exist less now but sort of middle-aged women living in a bedsit on limited means you know who would be you know hitting the ceiling with a you know the broom handle to tell you to keep quiet you know these women sort of spinsterish women that you're all completely terrified of being bedsit land and you know this is cockroaches you know poverty all of that kind of thing and i think we saw this kind of abyss you know this kind of gulf of horror that you know possibly and you you know you get to the age you're like oh that's all right i'm okay fine that didn't happen um we're out we're out the other side yeah we're on the other side of that um but i i think that rereading it it rereading her her her style is so extraordinary i remember having a conversation with a publisher who was very taken aback when i

said that i thought that gene reese was one of the great writers of the 20th century and he said slightly sneeringly he said well i put her on the par with evelyn war yeah yeah i mean i love evelyn war and you know, but this woman is doing something so far beyond, you know, what Wall was doing, even though I like him very much. I can see some of the similarities, you know, particularly in those early novels. But these are not social novels. I think that, you know, the pain of reading her has subsided. that you know the pain of reading her has subsided um and i now think to myself how is she being read by people who are coming at her for the first time and now i find out i would like to make a just a very quick uh mention for a book that was recommended to me by er Anderson at Lonesome Reader called Difficult Women by David Plant,

which is a memoir of working with, in reverse order, Germaine Greer, Sonia Orwell and Jean Rees. Jesus Christ. And the description of ministering to Jean's requirements in her 80s while attempting to coax her autobiography out of her is one of the most hair-raising reads imaginable. And that sense of what it must have been like to be Jean Rees at that stage is very brilliantly communicated there,

which brings us, the being Jean Rees, brings us to, at last, Mr Matthew Clayton. And a tenuous link tenuous link well i was uh i was thinking about that i was thinking about our connection to her and um how we kind of bring her back to life and i was when i was reading the book i was interested to discover you linda you talked earlier about the hats and the clothes and there's also perfumes mentioned yeah which was the perfume that the main character wears and is also the perfume that was jean's favorite perfume and i was um amazed to discover that it's still being manufactured so i went to debonams at lunchtime

and i've got in this bag i went in there and kind of embarrassed myself by going to the kind of tester thing and getting some, going and asking if they had a blur. And they did. So I've got some here. So I thought we could all. Brilliant. Brilliant.

I've got some for us all to smell. And I thought, Andy, maybe you could start by smelling the glove. Smell the glove. Smile time. Thank you very much. It's on here. It's on the glove. Yeah, it's on the glove smell the glove um thank you very much it's on here it's on the glove yeah it's on the glove actually produceable it costs 80 quid yeah i know so you sprayed the gloves i sprayed the gloves what do you think it smells like can you

well to me it smells of mr sheen yeahen. Yeah. If that's what you... Mr. Jean. I'm not really a... I'm not good on that. How would you describe it? I can give you the manufacturer's description. Go on. So it's described as it opens with a spicy, sweet aniseed note.

Yeah. That leads into rose, carnation, violet. The soft and powery floral notes rest on a bed of vanilla. Do they? Yeah. And it's supposed to evoke the... Is this the perfume that... That Jean wore.

And that Sasha wore in the book. Yes. Yes, it is. Just mix that smell with some Pernod. Yeah, and then you've got the girl. You have the smell. Can we just say that very few people have ever written better about drink, ever. I mean, she's just, she's really, I love this great passage.

I have an irresistible longing for a long, strong drink to make me forget that once again I have given damnable human beings the right to pity me and laugh at me. Isn't that brilliant? That's every time i've ever been in a bar ever damnable human beings and the book is the books you know you can buy obviously you can buy the book and the perfume on amazon which do you think has the highest customer rating no the book or the perfume so linda you So, Linda, you're going for the book.

Andy, you're going for perfume. Well, I have to go for the perfume, obviously. Well, it's actually the book. The book's 4.4. Yeah. The perfume, only 4.1. Well, that's because it's a perfume which is dated. Do you know what I mean?

It's very old lady. It's very old lady. It smells very old lady. The thing about perfume, if you're a woman, is you have to be – men don't like what they perceive to be old lady perfume. And I remember I had just come from a perfumier, and I had two scents, one in each hand, and I was at the hairdresser's, and I said to the hairdresser, male, which one do you like?

And he said, don't like that one, it's old lady. So contemporary men don't like strong scents, strong complex scents. Matthew, are those your gloves, or just find them in the in the um I do love scrubbing gloves they're my gloves now you're gonna be smelling of Jean Rhys on my cycle home yeah can I tell you one thing that my QI research threw up many years ago which is extraordinary is that they they did they tested a lot of um on sperm, and the main chemical that's in Lily of the Valley, they discovered, made sperm swim three times as fast as any other.

So, you know, your kind of grandma's knicker drawers. They don't think they have them now, but you'd have Lily of the Valley sachets in your drawers. Possibly all worked out for the best. I mean, the final thing about the perfume i think is maybe one of the reasons why she loved it so much is the stopper of the perfume is a hollow heart oh there it is tenuous but so so so that's very nice well thanks for uh listening thank you linda thank you for coming to talk about je Rees. Thank you, Matthew, for your tireless research and your ability to go into Debenhams and smell the glove.

Thank you, John. Thank you, everyone, for listening. If you've got something you want to contribute to Backlisted, you can get in touch with us via Facebook. We're on Twitter at BacklistedPod. And we'll see you soon in a fortnight. Thanks very much. If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts,

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