[In the following review, Gould admires the stories in Sleep It Off, Lady, observing that each "has something to say and says it with utter simplicity and stark economy. "]

"It's as if I'm twins," says a young woman in one of the stories in Jean Rhys's new collection. And the author elaborates: "Only one of the twins accepted. The other felt lost, betrayed, forsaken, a wanderer in a very dark wood. The other told her that all she accepted so meekly was quite mad, potty."

This passage contains the essence of Jean Rhys's vision. The universe lours, the sky is the "colour of no hope," people are simultaneously smug and dangerous to know, nothing is quite what it seems—yet what can you do but accept? Did not Christ say, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth"?

Sleep It Off, Lady is all we have come to expect from this remarkable writer, now in her eighties. None of the stories is more than a few pages long, but each one has something to say and says it with utter simplicity and stark economy. Their uniqueness lies in the peculiar blend of innocence and experience which is Jean Rhys's hallmark.

In the story, "Goodbye Marcus, Goodbye Rose," is the twelve year old girl an innocent victim? She goes out for walks with the old sea-captain, who talks of love and whose hand once "dived inside her blouse and clamped itself around one very small breast." Should she tell? Of course she doesn't, and only partly for fear of being blamed. She examines her own behaviour and decides that "he'd seen at once that she was not a good girl—who would object—but a wicked one—who would listen. He must know. He knew. It was so." Whether she was innocent or not is finally irrelevant. The experience has given her a new view of herself, and that is what counts.

It has been said of Jean Rhys that her voice remains young, and certainly some of her best stories are told from a child's standpoint. But perhaps the most memorable one in this collection is the title story, which describes the death of a lonely old woman. Even in this, the voice is young. The infirm and frightened old lady is that twin who is "lost, betrayed, forsaken, a wanderer in a very dark wood." The twin who accepts is, of course, the artist Jean Rhys. That is her secret, her ability to view her other self—at any stage of life—quite dispassionately. This is the truth. There it is. It is so.