I really tried to like this novel. I tried first reading this via the ebook that Netgalley provided and when that didn't work, I then checked out the audiobook once the book came out. Neither worked. I only got about 40% in before I finally gave up. The biggest issue I came across is this book just felt like one long negative sentence. I found very little positive or redeeming characteristics about the main character and as she is driving force, where is the point of reading the novel after that? It's too bad because the novel sounded so great when I first read about it. It just didn't pan out.

A View of the Empire at Sunset is a fictional retelling of the life of Jean Rhys, imagining the private moments that aren't public record. It is an exploration of immigration and exile, and the complications of family. I found the story interesting, but the tone of the narration was kind of cold. I guess based on Rhys' own writing, I was expecting more passion, but I still enjoyed reading it.

I very much enjoyed this fictional recreation of the life of Jean Rhys. It’s necessarily fairly speculative, although clearly thoroughly researched, focussing largely on the earlier parts of her life and in particular the trip she made back to visit her home on Domenica, a trip she didn’t document. Although the book largely ignores her writing life, nevertheless I felt it presents the reader with an evocative and compelling portrait of this most troubled of writers. True to the facts as far as they are known, Phillips has also remained true to the spirit of her life and for me it felt authentic and convincing. We nevertheless don’t really get to know Rhys, and she remains enigmatic, a sad and essentially lonely character. Phillips deals expertly with his themes of exile, displacement, loss and alienation and the novel is a heart-felt portrayal of the migrant experience. Recommended.

I slogged through this one and not always happily I might add. This is a sullen read with not many bright spots although the prose is arousing enough too carry you through. Apparently, according to the book’s blurb this is a fictionalized telling of the true life story of writer Jean Rhys who is famous for the book, Wide Sargasso Sea. In this fictionalization the reader would never know of this connection as the links are not readily revealed in these pages. Gwennie is the center of the novel and the perspective of this book is all hers. She leaves her Caribbean island home of Dominica and arrives in England at thirteen years of age to live under the care of her Aunt Clarice.

Doesn’t take Gwennie long to realize she can never be English enough for the English and this realization is of great distress to her throughout her life and leads to a couple of bad marriages and a constant longing for home but not in a loving way that is clearly displayed in the work. The longing seems more out of curiosity and sense of missing home. The novel starts with Gwennie and her husband preparing for a trip back to Dominica and circles back and forth between present and recent past requiring attention of the reader.

Although Gwennie is a likable enough character, I never made a full investment in her due to the sometimes foggy descriptions of time, place and incidents. It’s a novel that you at once understand the writer took great care in crafting and you recognize the brightness and talent of such a task, but something is leaving you cold, unsatisfied. I’m not suggesting you not read this one, if you are a fan of Jean Rhys, I suspect it would hold a higher joy for you. If you love impressive prose than it doesn’t get much better than Caryl Phillips. A three star rating says it is average but the joy of the writing perhaps adds another half star. Thanks to Farrar Straus&Giroux and Netgalley for an advance DRC. Book was published in May and is available wherever books are sold.

What a brilliant final line to this strange, not entirely satisfactory, yet often dazzling novel. It’s about Jean Rhys, I learned elsewhere, but if you didn’t know that, the book wouldn’t reveal it. There’s very occasional mention of Gwendolen’s writing, but the focus is on the woman, her sad,often sour and misunderstood life and times, and above all her alienation. Phillips can writ like an angel, but this novel ,needed tighter editorial control. It can seem like a laundry list of bad relationships and choices. The period detail is very persuasive. I was both compelled by it and left a somewhat disappointed.

Caryl Phillips is a Caribbean-born British writer now living in New York, so it's easy to guess why he might relate to Jean Rhys, who grew up in colonial Dominica in the early twentieth century. In this biographical novel, she is known by her real name of Gwendolen Williams. It's a little disappointing that her writing is barely mentioned, but then her life and her art were closely intertwined. The opening chapters, which describe her childhood in Dominica and subsequent banishment, and the closing chapters which describe her return, were for me the most beautiful parts of the book. The middle section, which covers her many lovers and desparate existence in Paris and London, was less revealing, perhaps because Rhys captured it so well in her own stories. However, Phillips evokes the sadness of a woman torn between two cultures with poignancy, and also her innate waywardness which some critics have mistaken for passivity.

I just read Wide Sargasso Sea last year for the first time. As someone who loves Jane Eyre, it took quite a bit for me to enjoy the story of Bertha.

A View of the Empire at Sunset is the fictionalized story of Jean Rhys, the author of Wide Sargasso Sea. ....Yikes. What a gloomy life and book. It's a fleshed out ideal of her life and experiences and....boy is everyone depressed.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

Thank you for approving me for the book. However, I felt that I was the wrong reader for this book, The story didn't captivate me at all so I decided to not finish it since I don't want to leave bad reviews anymore.

Interesting. Gwen, who wrote as Jean Rhys, lived a miserable life, always between worlds and never feeling part of anything. That gloom does pervade this novel but it's important to understand her. Nicely written and insightful. Thanks to net galley for the ARC. This is for fans of novels about famous female authors.

Good God, what a gloomy book. The sections in sun-drenched Dominica are gloomy, the parts in dank, unfriendly pre-war England are gloomy, Gwen's depressed, and everyone else in the book is on the brink of suicide, or maybe just past. No, I couldn't finish.

I was very excited about this novel considering that "Wide Sargasso Sea" was such a touchstone novel for many, the first of the series of novels to come of famous stories told from another point of view. The author's story must be fascinating, I thought, growing up in the Caribbean and moving to England for school, working in the theater, all that. Nope.

Caryl Phillips writes well, but this story is way too much of a slog. Was every moment of her life awful? Did I give up before the bright spots? Maybe. But I think not.

I read The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys some years ago and found the novel an unforgettable prequel to Jane Eyre from the viewpoint of Rochester's 'mad' wife.

Rhys vividly described the Caribbean childhood of Antoinette Cosway Rochester, a beautiful Creole whose family entraps Mr. Rochester into marriage. Rhys interprets Antoinette as the victim of a man repulsed by the sensuality of the Caribbean culture and horrified by female sexuality

When I saw that Caryl Phillips' novel A View of the Empire at Sunset was based on the life of Gwendolyn Rees Williams, who wrote as Jean Rhys, I was eager to read it. I expected passion and glamour and agony.

Gwen was the child of a British man and a Creole woman, unhappily paired. Dominica is beautifully described, the "raucous cacophony of cicadas and frogs," the bats around the mango trees, the mosquitos and the "sickly sweet aroma of the night lilies.'

At sixteen, Gwen was forced from her beloved homeland to be educated in England under her aunt's care. She never really adjusts. She leaves school for the theater and music halls, is taken as a mistress then discarded, becomes a prostitute, has an abortion, is married several times. She drinks too much. Her older brother suffers from "delusions and bouts of agitated mania."

The novel opens in 1936 when Gwen and her husband return to her homeland. They are unhappily paired, but Gwen thinks that if he could see her roots perhaps he would understand she is not of his world. When he sees the view of the empire at sunset, there would be understanding that she could never really be English. Gwen learns that she can't go home again.

Gwen's literary life is outside of the novel, concentrating on her personal life. The "Empire at sunset," the Edwardian Age and colonization in Dominica, is vital to the story.

The novel offered me an understanding of Gwen's darkness and disorientation, her lack of options, the sad feeling of being the temporary object of men's desire. And I saw how young Gwen was devalued in her homeland, not British enough to be respectable, too hoyden and uncivilized, too close to the Negro servants.

And unforgettable was the ending, Gwen and her husband at the burned ruins of her family home, unable to grasp why the Negros would have destroyed such a beautiful place, the sins of colonization beyond their understanding. But I was disappointed in the emotional distance I felt, especially when I expected some of the pathos and passion of Rhys's writing.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.