Belonging Nowhere

In June 1931, in a letter to her friend and fellow writer Evelyn Scott, Jean Rhys spelled out a recurring, and apparently insoluble, problem that she had with publishers: “I am always being told that until my work ceases being ‘sordid and depressing’ I haven’t much chance of selling.” Rhys was 40, and her third book had just been published, following The Left Bank (1927) and Quartet (1929). After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (1931) is the first of her great middle-period trilogy, the altar at which most of her fans still worship.