RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksHis closeness to his subject shows in his style and in the evidence of the rigorous research he did for the novel, which is a dream come true for anyone who has been to the archives; seeing those unsettling, scrawled sentiments of hers in narrative form is thrilling. For those readers who have not made the trip to Tulsa, Phillips offers a compelling and troubling portrait of a writer whose work explores the same kind of precarity and vulnerability that Philips depicts in Rhys herself ... What Phillips really captures in A View of the Empire at Sunset is not so much Rhys’s voice—her character rarely speaks aloud, and the narrative is sparing with her inner thoughts as well—but her eerie way of being in the world. The brushstrokes of this portrait are affective, and the palette is of muted feelings ... Phillips evokes a certain pathos for a woman just trying to get through life day by day and year by year ... Shifting smoothly between past and present tense throughout the novel, Phillips implies that imperial time is slippery and the present can shift into the past or vice versa at any moment.
