Jean Rhys is best known for “The Wide Sargasso Sea”, which reimagines and brings to the fore a sympathetic portrayal of the a character who plays a minor but menacing part in “Jane Eyre”: “the mad woman in the attic”, Mr Rochester’s wife “Bertha”. I was unaware that this was written when Rhys was in her seventies, bringing a fame and much-needed income which she felt had come too late. Lack of money and being “let down” by men in her early adult life, together with the experience of being an outsider, as a woman brought up in the West Indies, but moving to England and Paris, must all have provided material for her early novels, such as “After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie”, published in 1931 when Rhys was about forty.

In 1920s Paris and London, in a world recovering form the First World War but drifting into recession, women had limited opportunities, being expected to follow the conventional path of marriage and children. Although we have to piece together the backstory of the anti-heroine Julia Martin, it is clear that she has chosen not to conform, marrying a man with whom she can drift round Europe, but not rely upon to provide for her. Since leaving him, she has resorted to scrounging off a succession of former and new, casual lovers. When the latest of these, a certain Mr. Mackenzie decides he has salved his conscience and paid her off with a sufficient number of weekly allowances, she turns to her increasingly unsupportive relatives: the dutiful sister embittered through caring for their dying mother, and a sanctimonious uncle.

The previous death of Julia’s young child may be seen as an excuse for her behaviour, although Jean Rhys does not explicitly suggest this, post-natal depression and concern over “mental health” not featuring much in the 1920s. From our C21 stance, Julia’s apathy, failure to manage her affairs, and the blunting of her sadness with wine and brandy may test our patience. I am not sure at what point Jean Rhys became the impoverished alcoholic with the personal experience to convey both Julia’s weakness and vulnerability, and the reactions it evokes in others.

Yet, although it is undeniably bleak, and if it had been much more than a novella in length, I would have been unlikely to finish it, I was carried along by the authentic ring of the author’s clear, spare prose, touched with wry humour. Despite the radical change in life styles, the novel seems modern in its directness. It enables you to visualise and sense interwar Paris and London, and to enter the shifting thoughts of all the flawed characters involved. Jean Rhys has the skill and humanity to enable us to empathise with them all to varying degrees, although her focus is on Julia, who observes her surroundings acutely, but blanks out the bigger picture, rather than face up to the practicalities of improving her situation. In a society in which a woman’s looks count for too much, the inevitable fading of Julia’s youthful appeal is for her the last straw.