It is sad to have to report that, after reading "Smile Please" and comparing it with Miss Rhys's autobiographical novels, one gets the impression that the novels give a much truer picture of her. While Miss Rhys herself edited her life for the novels, time and disillusionment edited that same life in "Smile Please" and the second distortion is greater.

There's a fine vignette, for example, in "Good Morning, Midnight," in which the heroine goes into a shop to buy a hat. Because her life is out of tune and because she is who she is, Miss Rhys's character cannot settle on a choice. When a sales girl says "Hats are very difficult this year," the remark becomes the perfect metaphor for the woman and her situation.

How much better this is than hearing Miss Rhys say that she was always a stranger, someone who never belonged anywhere….

"Smile Please" reads as if the author knew that she had said it all better before. Or, to put it another way, it is as if the novels had used up all her life and she had nothing left but a bitter silence….