Good Morning, Midnight: Jean Rhys (Penguin Modern Classics)

£4.995
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Good Morning, Midnight: Jean Rhys (Penguin Modern Classics)

Good Morning, Midnight: Jean Rhys (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Price: £4.995
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As if everyone who is a part of this ruthless world has merged into that collective derisive laughter that is directed towards her and rings in her ears every time and everywhere she goes. But I still say Good Morning, Midnight is a more grown-up book than Tropic of Cancer, just as Rhys’s Paris—glum, bitchy, lower middle-class—is less romanticized than Miller’s Brassai-esque version. Originally published in 1939 and with a new introduction, Good Morning, Midnight portrays Sophia Jansen, a young single woman who, upon arriving in France to flee personal tragedy, seeks to emancipate herself and exploit her sexuality.

Rhys’ tone gradually acquires the darkness that lies in wait, ready to ambush, pushing Sasha and the reader closer to the edge of the precipice that threatens to engulf everything, all thought, all hope, but also the unfathomable sadness that corrodes from within. Rhys has given us the best kind of unreliable narrator here, one who is unreliable even to herself, and though there's not much in terms of scene work to latch onto, the novel is very fast. Three hours to choose a hat; every morning an hour and a half trying to make myself look like everybody else. This can be seen by the amount of literature concerned with these two essential elements of life, and Jean Rhys has conjured up an exquisite example of the stream of consciouness 'life in the gutter' tale of a girl lost and alone. In an interview shortly before her death she questioned whether any novelist, not least herself, could ever be happy for any length of time.With each revelation I dropped more and more of my feeble attempt to make her understand that things weren't so bad as all that.

I haven't yet read the other reviews but I'm wondering whether readers come away with differing views of the main character and where her life has been and is heading. Her fictional alter ego is slowly losing everything: her looks, her faith in humanity, her will to live. Rhys' figure of Lise, with whom Sasha has a loving, non-hierarchical bond, is seen by Tomasulo as an 'ironic commentary' on Liza.The way Rhys goes about describing Paris is quite sinister, moving from one cheap hotel on dead-end street that backs out onto a dingy ally, to another. These scenesters of hers reminded me of my brother's friends who were always broke and stole and then still borrowed or lent money to everybody else.

A disaffected, thirty-something guy abandons his wife, moves to Paris and sleeps with some prostitutes. Often considered a continuation of Rhys' three other early novels, Quartet (1928), After Leaving Mr. Only able to make the trip because of some money lent to her by a friend, she is financially unstable and haunted by her past, which includes an unhappy marriage and her child's death. It is not melancholy that drives Sasha, it is utter despair, and how a person with this little connection to life keeps living is beyond explanation.

Would I be able to penetrate her loneliness, through the darkness of our hopelessness felt together. Not wanting to relive her past life in Paris, she tries to stay busy, making a point to stick to a strict schedule. Is the only choice to somehow be with a man who will not leave you, who will stay long enough to make you believe that happiness is possible, that life is not such a drudge, an unending rollercoaster, up and down, up and down but somehow not like a rollercoaster because more downs than ups? Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall).



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