Tigers Are Better Looking : With a selection from The Left Bank

Tigers are better-looking by Jean Rhys is a collection of stories from the end and the beginning of her career. Dealing with women's lives, the eternal outsider, underdog, the colonial immigrant, the impoverished hopeful, the disappointed alcoholic, the starving model and the semi-prostitute, they are all depressing, although the protagonists of the early stories are relatively young and attractive, still at the centre of male attention, still groping toward materialisation of dreams. Thirty years later all that's left is accumulated bitterness and rage. Women are stranded alone, in poverty, dying of unnamed illnesses, brutally ridiculed because they are old, and old and poor, and old and poor and odd. Their tragedy (for Rhys at least) show more lies precisely in their gender. On top of ordinary human tragedy everyone gets to partake in--existing, hoping, decaying and dying--the women get punished extra, in the form of scant regard by society, lifelong humiliations, reduced opportunities.

The late stories are brilliant; the early ones (which Rhys herself didn't think were worth reprinting) a bit derivative and self-conscious, but interesting for allowing to trace the trajectory between two periods. show less

Just awful stream of consciousness short stories about almost suicidal women.

Jean Rhys was born in Roseau, Dominica, West Indies. Her father was a Welsh doctor and her mother was a Dominican Creole. Her heritage deeply influenced her life as well as her writing. At seventeen, her father sent her to England to attend the Perse School, Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Unfortunately, she was forced to abandon her studies when her father died. Rhys worked as a chorus girl and ghostwrote a book on furniture. During World War I, she volunteered in a soldier canteen and, in 1918, worked in a pension office. In 1919, she went to Holland and married the French-Dutch journalist and songwriter Jean Langlet. They had two children, a daughter and a son who died as an infant. She began writing under show more the patronage of Ford Madox Ford. Her husband was sentenced to prison for illegal financial transactions. Her affair ended badly with Ford, and her marriage ended in divorce. In 1934, she married Leslie Tilden Smith who died in 1945. Two years later, she married Max Hamer who died in 1966. Rhys lived many years in the West Country, most often in great poverty. In 1927, Rhys' first collection of stories, "The Left Bank and Other Stories," was published. Her first novel, "Quartet" (1928), is considered to be an account of her affair with Ford Madox Ford told through Marya, a young English woman. In "Voyage in the Dark" (1934), the character is a young chorus girl involved with an older lover. She has also written "Good Morning, Midnight" (1939) and "Sleep It Off Lady" (1976) and the internationally acclaimed "Wide Sargasso Sea" (1960). Rhys was made a CBE in 1978 and received the W.H. Smith Award, the Royal Society of Literature Award and an Arts Council Bursart. Rhys died on May 14, 1979 in Exeter. In the same year, her unfinished autobiography "Smile Please" appeared. show less

"Les tigres sont plus beaux à voir" de Jean Rhys. Elles sont tristes, mal aimées, dénigrées, mais également fières et pleines de vie, les prostituées qui incarnent les personnages principaux de ce recueil de nouvelles. Des histoires qui plongent le lecteur dans des tranches de vie, parfois confuses, mais toujours désespérées.

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Rhys-Les-tigres-sont-plus-beaux-a-voir/16992

> Jean Rhys observe la vie d'un regard acéré et restitue ses observations recomposant un monde plutôt cruel.
—Danieljean (Babelio)