The prospect of writing even a review of a biography Jean Rhys is slightly scary. She wrote formidably depressing books, including a particularly lugubrious – if admirably clever - take on the Caribbean, Wide Sargasso Sea (she took the character of the mad creole woman, Rochester’s first wife, in the attic in Jane Eyre and told her story). And Rhys was well known as difficult person in real life. It is compelling material however. There is no doubt that for all her faults, Rhys is one of the leading lights of twentieth century writing in English.

Lilian Pizzichini’s new biography is sharply written and readable. It certainly doesn’t dispel any of Rhys’s reputation as a difficult person, but The Blue Hour is sympathetic in that it tries to understand why Rhys was how she was and it certainly does give an insight for the reader into her behaviour.

The book begins with Rhys’s return to Dominica as an established writer in 1936, using it as a springboard to describe her upbringing on the island and to start a generally chronological narrative. The point for P