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

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He also senses that Sasha is lonely and says that he, too, used to feel isolated and alone—until, that is, he started forcing himself to be social. 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.

Because he thinks she’s good luck—after all, he found the rich American woman shortly after spending time with Sasha. Something that would mean a symbolic relief from the past, the present, the sadness and the loneliness. She’s familiar with small, dim rooms like this one, though it’s been a while since she last lived in Paris. Since I was born, hasn’t every word I’ve said, every thought I’ve thought, everything I’ve done, been tied up, weighted, chained?Rhys had disappeared from public view and fallen into obscurity shortly after Good Morning, Midnight was published in 1939. 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. Rhys' figure of Lise, with whom Sasha has a loving, non-hierarchical bond, is seen by Tomasulo as an 'ironic commentary' on Liza.

Rhys’ intimate meditations on the “improbable truths” and hypocrisies of life bring about sharp observations on the dynamics among classes and the correlation between physical spaces and social decline towards the complete annulation of the self. The charge : assaulting a lodger, Mr Bezant, and the arresting officer, after a party the day before, which Mrs Hamer objected to on grounds of noise. I felt much pity for Sasha, after all she goes through, and this was the defining turning point for me when it comes to female protagonists.

Obviously this is not the sellers fault, but something to keep in mind if you are hard with your books. I hated the book, from its vintage-1970 jacket (uuugh) to its cigarette-scented pages, many of which the last person to check the book out of the liberry (in 1983) was kind enough to sprinkle with hair and dandruff which landed on my chest as I turned them (I almost retched), and then on to its self-pitying, cloying, oh-shut-UP narrative of the nothing that happens to the narratrix. City of both love and desperation, perfect for a lover’s mindless hedonism and exuberant fatalism, as well as its ensuing void.

The center of the novel is her fragmented subjective experience of the circumstances accompanied by pain so overbearing it is accompanied by deep disorientation - of who you are, where are you going, what are you supposed to do, and even the meaning of your life.

Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall).

She suffers in isolation and feels conjoined and yet detached with all that is damned and discarded and how this leads to an intensification of the loneliness she feels. Mind you, I'm not talking about the struggle when you are strong and a good swimmer and there are willing and eager friends on the bank waiting to pull you out at the first sign of distress. Yes, I do see some of myself in her, but it’s more like looking at my reflection in a dirty, cracked mirror. You jump in with no willing and eager friends around, and when you sink you sink to the accompaniment of loud laughter.She tries to relive the dream of her youth, but she doesn’t alter her behaviour; she carries on in her woe, and it is her end. Jean Rhys's Good Morning Midnight is an unforgettable portrait of a woman bravely confronting loneliness and despair in her quest for self-determinationIn 1930s Paris, where one cheap hotel room is very like another, a young woman is teaching herself indifference. A new hat, a new dress, new hair, a good meal; a reinvention that would not have the pieces of the past sticking on her. Abandoned by her lover, completely destitute and in a permanent state of intoxication, she slowly drinks herself away to utter obliteration.