The novelist Alexander Chee and I corresponded at Granta this summer about Jean Rhys’ doomed love affair with Ford Madox Ford and the novels each of them wrote after it imploded.
Rhys’ novel was called Quartet. I have no idea whether the 1981 Merchant Ivory film based on it is any good, but it’s been posted online in ten parts. Although the first couple minutes of this first segment are strained, it starts to pick up, so I’ll keep watching.
Related: Rhys’ somewhat contradictory statements about the autobiographical nature of the book, and my review of a recent Rhys biography, The Blue Hour.