Good Morning, Midnight (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Jean Rhyspublished
August 3rd 2000
(first published 1939)
by Penguin Books Ltd
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binding
Paperback, 176 pages
isbn
0141183934
(isbn13: 9780141183930)
description
Sasha Jensen has returned to Paris, the city of both her happiest moments and her most desperate. Her past lies in wait for her in cafes, bars, and dr...more
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Read in June, 2008
This book is a quick read, but a very sad read. The main character, Sophia, begins her lamenting and suffering on page 1 and it never stops (save for a glimpse here or there of hope that lasts about 2 paragraphs or, if you're lucky, an entire page.) I definitely liked Good Morning, Midnight, but I felt like I wanted it to end almost immediately, because it's so hard to just read about this woman's suffering and watch the people in her life fuck her over for so long. The first-person narrative is...more
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Read in September, 2008
Wow, its so nice to finally find a female author who I really like. I've waded through the Plaths, the Austins, the Rands (the worst of the lot), the Morrisons, etc etc etc, but none have ever really spoken to me much. Rhys' disconnection from those around her reaches across gender roles and places her squarely within Humanity.
Rhys' protaganist admits early on that she decided to start going by Sasha, but her real name is never truly revealed. What the reader does know about her is that she...more
Rhys' protaganist admits early on that she decided to start going by Sasha, but her real name is never truly revealed. What the reader does know about her is that she...more
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Read in May, 2008
recommends it for:
fans of the darker-minded dames of literature
"Don't tell me that I'm like other women - I'm not."
When women write women, they write with authenticity because they write of their emotional selves. Jean Rhys' "Sophia" is broken and sad. A minor tragedy fixed a crack in her emotional psyche that is cannot be fixed, only momentarily sated. She writes about the relations between men and women with a raw intensity and a Plath meets Nin narrative sense. Her male characters too ring true, unwittingly cruel in the way that m...more
When women write women, they write with authenticity because they write of their emotional selves. Jean Rhys' "Sophia" is broken and sad. A minor tragedy fixed a crack in her emotional psyche that is cannot be fixed, only momentarily sated. She writes about the relations between men and women with a raw intensity and a Plath meets Nin narrative sense. Her male characters too ring true, unwittingly cruel in the way that m...more
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Read in January, 1995
recommended to Maya by:
Eastchester Public Libraryrecommends it for: Everyone who ever thought they felt too much. Which is probably everyone!
I often think of the line "And when I say afraid--that's just a word I use. What I really mean is that I hate them" (about people).
I think I'm in love w/this book. The fact I identified with it so much at such a young age is a little ridiculous, esp. because I didn't drink and now when I read I am much more attuned to how the alcohol was playing a really really bad role in this woman's life.
There are so many great lines and moments in this book. Basically the main character ...more
I think I'm in love w/this book. The fact I identified with it so much at such a young age is a little ridiculous, esp. because I didn't drink and now when I read I am much more attuned to how the alcohol was playing a really really bad role in this woman's life.
There are so many great lines and moments in this book. Basically the main character ...more
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In, I think, 2000 I met a woman in a completely sketchy dive in Williamsburg [of course:]. She was a window display designer, like Rhoda Morganstern. My friends and I went back to her apartment for a party. The entire absurd debacle ended with a group sing-a-long of VU's "Sunday Morning" at 9 in the morning. As we were FINALLY leaving, the hostess gave me this book and told me that it was one of her favorites and she just knew that I would really get it. It's about a woman who has hit ...more
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I read Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea along time ago in a Woman’s lit class and liked it. This is my second book by her, and it is bleak. A woman stripped bare and empty by despair, wishing for annihilation, prowls the cafes and darkened hotel rooms of Paris preyed on by the puppets and jackals of humanity. Fits on the shelf next to Celine, Henry Miller’s Parisian rants, Camus’ The Stranger, and Djuna Barnes’ nutty Nightwood, but is a little more grim than them.
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Read in December, 2007
I read Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea along time ago in a Woman’s lit class and liked it. This is my second book by her, and it is bleak. A woman stripped bare and empty by despair, wishing for annihilation, prowls the cafes and darkened hotel rooms of Paris preyed on by the puppets and jackals of humanity. Fits on the shelf next to Celine, Henry Miller’s Parisian rants, Camus’ The Stranger, and Djuna Barnes’ nutty Nightwood, but is a little grim than them.
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Jean Rhys is shockingly elegant. She brilliantly confuses, and gives grace and redemption - a strange, ill-begotten contentment that isn't really contentment at all but hot, fiery hunger and anger and despair - to deeply sad characters. Her storytelling is tight, flawless, and unflinching. It's like a visit to the eye doctor - the doctor looks straight back to the retina and sees darkness.
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Read in February, 2000
recommended to Fancee by:
It was for a class.recommends it for: Everyone
A stark and often dim view into the heart and mind of a woman who has lived long enough to be one of the genuinely and worldly beaten.
Not at all what I might call enjoyable, but definitely an eye opening experience that pointed out to me the troubles of the human condition that occur when one is stuck in a situation (be it past or present).
A very solitary adventure.
Not at all what I might call enjoyable, but definitely an eye opening experience that pointed out to me the troubles of the human condition that occur when one is stuck in a situation (be it past or present).
A very solitary adventure.
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Such a bad ending! The book is really hard to follow, people come in and out of her life, and you never know who is who for most of the book because it is written in the first person. I hated how I never know what was going on or who the main character Sasha was with or what she was doing. It was just too hard to follow for most of it to bother reading.
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This really is a good book taken on its own. The drawback of Jean Rhys is that you can't read too much of her work -- hopeless heroines, depressed and uanble to change their lot, or not caring enough to change it. It all begins to feel a little too familiar.
Try Wide Sargasso Sea or Quartet first.
Try Wide Sargasso Sea or Quartet first.
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As perfect a novel as I have ever read. Written during the height of modernism, Rhys captures the discombobulated, distant, and fundamentally disillusioned mood of post-war Europe. At times realistic, at others completely surreal, the novel, while dark, nevertheless fascinates.
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Style + substance.
This, along with "After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie" and "Quartet," is the antidote to the tedious verbal masturbation passing for fiction these days. If you only know Rhys from "Sargasso," which I don't care for, check out one of these earlier novels.
This, along with "After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie" and "Quartet," is the antidote to the tedious verbal masturbation passing for fiction these days. If you only know Rhys from "Sargasso," which I don't care for, check out one of these earlier novels.
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Read in May, 2008
recommended to lisa_emily by:
CBCrecommends it for: drinking escapists
The narrator wanders around a haunted Paris, slipping into memory of the past while painful reminders of the present float by. She is alone, and the only others who share her fragile moments are the wounded. Rhys writes a poetic but hopeless story.
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Sometimes narrator feels like an older version of whiny Elizabeth Wurtzel, although narrator is French and therefore automatically whines more poetically. Just kidding. I just liked it less than Wide Sargasso Sea.
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Read in June, 2005
recommends it for:
Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore, Lydia Davis, Richard Yates
I like this book. I feel like Jean Rhys wrote it in despair but with a concentrating facial expression and sometimes she grinned a little and she edited it a lot and felt agony while editing.
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Read in March, 2008
i wish that i had read this in a class because i know there is a deeper layer to it that i am not appreciating. drunken soul searching, malaise of growing older, fractured reality.
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recommends it for:
pablo picasso, george bush
It reminds me of Camus's L'Etranger, and Rhys even tips a hat to that book a few times--but its more despairing, not nearly as cool and removed. It's a great tragedy, really.
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Ok. Maybe I just hate Jean Rhys, but this one is even worse than Wide Sargasso Sea. Did you know there was a dead baby in this book? I DIDN'T. Because it is senseless.
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Read in January, 2001
Saddest, bleakest, truest, most lyrical novel ever about being way down on your luck in post-war Paris. And that's really saying a lot, isn't it?
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 4.12 (317 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 4.04 (258 ratings) number of reviews: 32
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