I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys (William Collins), a new biography by Miranda Seymour, is a vivid portrait of the brilliant, troubled, Dominican writer. Drawing on surviving letters and other documents, and on Rhys’s often autobiographical fiction to fill the many gaps, Seymour portrays Rhys’s talent, ambition, and tenacity as well as her vulnerability and self-centredness — balancing honestly with compassion, tragedy with humour, and above all showing how memories of her early years in Dominica haunted all of Rhys’s writing.