Bibliograph

Difficult women, a memoir of three, David Plante ; introduction by Scott Spencer

Type

Label

Difficult women, a memoir of three, David Plante ; introduction by Scott Spencer

Language

eng

resource.biographical

contains biographical information

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Difficult women

Medium

electronic resource

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Oclc number

1004832495

Responsibility statement

David Plante ; introduction by Scott Spencer

Series statement

New York Review Books classics

Sub title

a memoir of three

Summary

Difficult Women presents portraits of three extraordinary, complicated, and, yes, difficult women, while also raising intriguing and, in their own way, difficult questions about the character and motivations of the keenly and often cruelly observant portraitist himself. The book begins with David Plante's portrait of Jean Rhys in her old age, when the publication of The Wide Sargasso Sea, after years of silence that had made Rhys's great novels of the 1920s and '30s as good as unknown, had at last gained genuine recognition for her. Rhys, however, can hardly be said to be enjoying her new fame. A terminal alcoholic, she curses and staggers and rants like King Lear on the heath in the hotel room that she has made her home, while Plante looks impassively on. Sonia Orwell is his second subject, a suave exploiter and hapless victim of her beauty and social prowess, while the unflappable, brilliant, and impossibly opinionated Germaine Greer sails through the final pages, ever ready to set the world, and any erring companion, right

Classification