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Good Morning, Midnight

3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 · rating details · 1,748 ratings · 148 reviews

In 1930s Paris, where one cheap hotel room is very like another, a young woman is teaching herself indifference. She has escaped personal tragedy and has come to France to find courage and seek independence. She tells herself to expect nothing, especially not kindness, least of all from men. Tomorrow, she resolves, she will dye her hair blonde.

Paperback, Penguin Modern Classics, 159 pages

Published August 3rd 2000 by Penguin Books Ltd (first published 1939)

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Mar 04, 2012 Mariel rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: the Siene's ripples

Recommended to Mariel by: Mars

Good Morning, Midnight is the suicide attempt after the first three Jean Rhys novels. In the river, not thrown in but feet wading in the tepidly toxic puddle. The dirty Seine. The unchosen clothes because they are front and back of the wardrobe still on. I don't know where the shoes are. Probably still on the shelf because there wasn't a fight. Quartet's dirty windows with dirty people inside are back. After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie's stillborn turtle shell room walked into the river and came out w...more Good Morning, Midnight is the suicide attempt after the first three Jean Rhys novels. In the river, not thrown in but feet wading in the tepidly toxic puddle. The dirty Seine. The unchosen clothes because they are front and back of the wardrobe still on. I don't know where the shoes are. Probably still on the shelf because there wasn't a fight. Quartet's dirty windows with dirty people inside are back. After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie's stillborn turtle shell room walked into the river and came out without the turtle and a flat line reading from a long line of tired radio ad gig girls: "I'm back to where I started. My head hurts and I've been crying for hours for nothing except this sick headache. Everyone could see what's worse is that I give as little a fuck about it as the rest of them." Sophia is the turtle, I guess. Or maybe a snail shell because this is France and they eat their snails. How do they prepare them, anyway? I'm a vegetarian and have no snail eating experience. Do they boil them alive like with lobsters? Twist their gonna get you laid tonight pricey necks off (Sophia is Red Lobster, if you look at price tags or think that people have price tags)? Dump the husks into a big pile of all the shells without snails? The dirty sin.

I don't remember when I first figured out what social anxiety was, that I had it or that anyone else felt like they couldn't do the simplest things without feeling like total shit about it. I think it was after a lot of comments from the peanut gallery. Sophia, Miss First First Person Perspective in a Jean Rhys novel herself, tells her tale about those flashes in a pan moments of bravery when she can forget all and be brave. If you trip and fall into bed (it was already there) and cry and have it all out and then get up again and feel all the eyes staring on you because you MUST look like you've fallen apart and it's much worse that this is the normal to get back to and everyone must know that it's not the end of the world and your normal at all (how awful it's not even the end) is not a flash in anyone's fire. Out of the frying pan and into the cold ashes left over in the place where you wish there was a fire... I wish Sophia was a first person. I've got my moments and a lot of them. I have the sad state of normal, too. I know that which Sophia doesn't know and that's if you can't be yourself you may as well not do anything at all. I do remember one moment in my youth when I sat outside myself and watched someone else go through it and went, "This is exactly how it is." The Glass Menagerie when Laura cannot go to school if she is late because she cannot stop feeling the back of heads eyes and those sixth sense extra hearing that backs of the heads have for a cripple's foot falls. "You're late! We were not late" seperators. ('Menagerie' was pretty much required in our home. My mom thought it was too funny to reenact the "rise and shine" scene on school days.) While I'm on awesome televised plays starring John Malkovich that influenced my teen years, Sophia has a very Lee in (Sam Shepard's) True West moment about people in windows and their lights and how not alone other people look. Maybe it's their windows placed together close to other like looking windows because she's not paying attention to where she's going (she's not walking). That's one of the best parts of the book. I have that feeling all of the time if I go outside and walk around when I'm feeling self conscious.

I know when I started figuring all of this out and reading 'Midnight' is like going back over old notes about figuring all of that out only without the look that stirred the longing for the allowance into that part of someone else and not with the crippling self doubt of my own that I get too damned often after I force me to go on being me (what else is there?). I don't want the self doubt without the look! Good Morning, Midnight is a great book if you want a study in that. I don't want that! Sophia doesn't want to be the receiver of others sad song radio waves and find herself dancing if or if not anyone is around. I do! (I think her radio is broken. Late night fm radio when the crowd looks different drunk and nothing for all day.)

This is me, I'm being me, brain rain go away and don't come back... Maybe I'll go here. Why did I cross that street? Could be that shady guy on the other side and that shady guy is am I doing what everyone else on the street is doing? All the umbrellas in Tokyo are black and all the rain clouds seem to be following only me. Hang out with guys in Paris. You look so lonely. Oh, Sophia, why can't you be like me because I've got it all figured out, baby. Scene guys. If they were around today they could all show up in some ironic website commentary about hipsters. What's worse is that Sophia's own past feels like that as she's sort of thinking about it. It reminded me of reading Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask (I love him but this one is by no means a favorite). He's upset because he's not normal and his idea of what is normal is so confusing it could fit into some driver's ed video on road safety. It's no one. Fitting into this nothing is nothing. Rhys and Mishima aren't like that and this must be the dead silent pause of doubt... It's interesting, in a way, and more killing than inspiring.

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. Did they do anything else but buy beer? I wish that Sophia didn't disappear into this normal herself in her effort to be like them. I was freaking bored with this. What were they doing? Did you do anything but borrow money, quit jobs and fall into bed and cry? If you don't just be yourself then what are you even doing? Do I have to feel dead too?! I know she died because the falling apart ended up where she already was and I could make a guess about dead babies and hospital bracelets and another one of those broken men who loan money. It could be like forgetting your phone number just because you tried to remember it form of social anxiety that Sophia has any time she tries to hold down a job (one of the most "That's how it is" parts for me). I don't want to guess. I want "That's exactly how it is" and I'm holding Rhys to the standard of her other novels. That's there being people to see. (Guessing is lonely.) I feel like all of this crying was for nothing and it's back to some unknowable square one...

The title is from an Emily Dickinson poem:
God morning, Midnight!
I'm coming home,
Day got tired of me-
How could I of him?
Sunshine was a sweet place,
I liked to stay-
But Morn didn't want me- now-
So good night, Day!

I know who did the rejecting of the day. But night is supposed to fall and it doesn't. Good bye, Midnight. The room curtains are drawn and the view stinks. I have a bad feeling that Rhys was just throwing a nowhere fit this time... If you cry to feel dead...

The photo is "Cafe terrace". There are outdoor cafes and cars out in front. I don't feel anything about these photos in relation to the book. They do remind me of the street cafes in Spanish cities that I always mistook for bus stops from the other side of the street, for some reason. Because of the glass and people. The photo cafes just look stuffed and not necessarily with people. They do seem to go to cafes just for a break in the conversations, in Good Morning, Midnight. I don't know what to say. Want to go to a cafe? Here's the cafe. Back where we started. Maybe that's why there are two of them in the photo.(less)

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Aug 27, 2012 Jenn(ifer) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: The Lonely Hearts Club

Recommended to Jenn(ifer) by: Mariel's review of 'after leaving Mr.Mackenzie

Shelves: summer-of-women-2012, female-authors, read-in-2012, you-should-read-this

Good Morning—Midnight—
I'm coming Home—
Day—got tired of Me—
How could I—of Him?

Sunshine was a sweet place—
I liked to stay—
But Morn—didn't want me—now—
So—Goodnight—Day!

I can look—can't I—
When the East is Red?
The Hills—have a way—then—
That puts the Heart—abroad—

You—are not so fair—Midnight—
I chose—Day—
But—please take a little Girl—
He turned away!
~ Emily Dickenson

>>>>

You know what feeling always does me in? Loneliness. When I start feeling lonely it’s hard for me to snap out of it. I ten...more

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Dec 22, 2009 Buck rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Buck by: Diana Athill, by way of Lobstergirl

Shelves: chicks-dig-it

A disaffected, thirty-something guy abandons his wife, moves to Paris and sleeps with some prostitutes. His name is Henry Miller and the book is called Tropic of Cancer.

A disaffected, thirty-something woman, after being abandoned by her husband, goes to Paris and almost sleeps with a gigolo. Her name is Jean Rhys and the book is called Good Morning, Midnight.

As near as I can figure, Miller and Rhys were in Paris at the same time. Maybe they even hung out in the same cafés and bought each other r...more A disaffected, thirty-something guy abandons his wife, moves to Paris and sleeps with some prostitutes. His name is Henry Miller and the book is called Tropic of Cancer.

A disaffected, thirty-something woman, after being abandoned by her husband, goes to Paris and almost sleeps with a gigolo. Her name is Jean Rhys and the book is called Good Morning, Midnight.

As near as I can figure, Miller and Rhys were in Paris at the same time. Maybe they even hung out in the same cafés and bought each other rounds of Pernod. Beyond that, you’d be hard-pressed to find two people more different. Miller looks at the world, sees himself everywhere and shouts, “Fuck, yeah.” Rhys peeks out her window, sees herself everywhere and mutters, “Meh.” Then she crawls back into bed with a bottle of gin and stares at the bugs on the wall.

I’m not convinced Henry Miller is a good role model for the thousands of middle-class boys who read him in late adolescence and are given this incredibly seductive picture of life as an endless bachelor party, with wall-to-wall pussy and intermissions of boozy philosophical chatter. It’s like learning all about girls from that disreputable uncle who used to keep back issues of Penthouse lying out in plain view and who spoke vaguely yet appealingly about Zen Buddhism. You know, the same uncle who was always hitting your parents up for “short-term loans.”

Rhys, then, is the anti-Miller. She’s a gigantic but necessary buzzkill. Where Miller is all about acquisition—of books, women, experiences—Rhys is all about loss. Her fictional alter ego is slowly losing everything: her looks, her faith in humanity, her will to live. There’s no self-pity; just the bitter resignation of someone who, out of pure disgust, has decided to drink herself to death.

Okay, so maybe Rhys isn’t such a great role model either. I could see how her world-view might have the same warping effect on a certain type of girl as Miller’s does on a certain type of boy. 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.

Wisdom would probably consist in finding some middle path between these two poles of egotism, but if I had to choose, I guess I’d take Rhys’s route. I mean, I have no desire to end up a depressive alcoholic in a rented room—though that’s a definite possibility at this point—but that does seem a marginally better fate than becoming a priapic fifty-year-old pontificating about Nietzsche to his cronies.

Or I could get married, move to the suburbs and avoid the whole sordid dilemma. Yeah, like that’s going to happen.
(less)

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Jun 04, 2007 Karen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: very-favorites, autobio-real-and-fictionalized, sad-people-wandering-perhaps-drunk

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 absolute ro...more

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May 11, 2013 Tao rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore, Lydia Davis, Richard Yates

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Nov 04, 2012 Shriya rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favourites

Good Morning, Midnight is a difficult novel with lots of beautiful poetry in it. Unlike the usual stream of consciousness novels, which go about from one thought to another without warning and with the apparent lack of beauty in conclusion and ceremony in commencement, Good Morning, Midnight gracefully melts from one scene into another. In fact, it has been written in such a way that the protagonist's thoughts seem to become a part of the reader's thoughts and change their course just when you...more Good Morning, Midnight is a difficult novel with lots of beautiful poetry in it. Unlike the usual stream of consciousness novels, which go about from one thought to another without warning and with the apparent lack of beauty in conclusion and ceremony in commencement, Good Morning, Midnight gracefully melts from one scene into another. In fact, it has been written in such a way that the protagonist's thoughts seem to become a part of the reader's thoughts and change their course just when you expect them to! The language is poetic, slightly humorous but in a dark way and very much similar to that of Margaret Atwood's style of writing. In fact, much like Atwood's works, the language in Good Morning, Midnight seems to make no sense at all at times!
Now coming to the Story:
Good Morning, Midnight talks about the immense grief and misery of Sophia Jansen, who has suffered much, lost much but has no one to share it with. In fact grief, self-pity and misery are so deeply rooted in her character that she hardly realises when she is feeling any different from what she usually does. The story starts with a dull, cheerless and dark note but ends with what seems like a spark of hope. However, what is commendable is, Good Morning, Midnight is perhaps one of the few sad and lonely stories which have the power to be deeply moving without being extremely depressing. The reader finds himself sympathisizing with Sophia's pain without experiencing it himself. Also, perhaps because the story is set in Paris, it has its own bunch of crazy artists, dirty streets and smelly bars and poor 'gigolos' in search of rich and pretty girls. Jean Rhys seems to be a voracious fan of descriptions and describes the sights, smells and odours so powerfully that a reader's imagination becomes as clear as if (s)he is watching a typical French movie, full of typically French characters and a bunch of French dialogues.

Of course it's not a book for everyone and maybe I wouldn't have liked it so much had I not admired movies like 'Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain' and books like 'The Catcher in the Rye' and 'The Tent' because the ending is abrupt, the language is incomprehensible and vague, even crazy at times. But overall, Good Morning, Midnight is one of those rare stories, which despite your craving for something more sane and sensible, are good enough to be remembered and cherished because the very feel of them is pleasant, despite their mood or tone! (less)

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Jun 02, 2012 Andrea rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics, favorites

The best of the author's early novels, "GMM" renders a chiseled portrait of an eternal outsider and her inability to fit in. The main character, Sasha, returns to Paris to complete her decline and do her own reckoning of her life. Some of the memories are held up for painful scrutiny, some recalled emotions christalize in her mind.
Rhys wrote this in the 1930's, and the evocation of Paris just before the war permeates every page. She combines this with Sacha's inner narrative and the result is a...more

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Mar 03, 2013 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars

We fought sometimes, Jean and I.

Midnight started well. We're introduced to narrator, Sasha Jensen, as she prepares to leave her claustrophobically secure room to find a place to have her nightly drink. This is a scene replicated many times throughout the novel. From the beginning we're aware that things in Sasha's world are shit. Just shit. In first person narration Sasha brings her world to life, gives us the skinny on why things are in fact as bad as they seem. But information does not come q...more We fought sometimes, Jean and I.

Midnight started well. We're introduced to narrator, Sasha Jensen, as she prepares to leave her claustrophobically secure room to find a place to have her nightly drink. This is a scene replicated many times throughout the novel. From the beginning we're aware that things in Sasha's world are shit. Just shit. In first person narration Sasha brings her world to life, gives us the skinny on why things are in fact as bad as they seem. But information does not come quickly. Sasha is a damaged person and though she has a bad habit of trusting the wrong people, despite her own wariness, she does not yet trust us her readers. If you want to know what's going on you have to gain her confidence. It's a bit of work sometimes, but it's worth undertaking.

Sometimes Sasha would feel extra sorry for herself. This was when she and I fought. She would tell me how things were so bad because of the way people treated her and I would look at it, removed from emotion at this early stage in our acquaintance, and say to her, "But you did such-and-such to yourself. Don't you see that? So why are you feeling sorry for yourself when you did it? You were mistrustful of people from the beginning, but you went along with it," and Sasha would go on a little longer, dancing around the topic and then she would throw a punch that landed right between my eyes and I would concede, "Oh, oh. Oh. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Carry on," and she would. But she still kept me at arm's length. Me, her reader. Imagine!

The instances where an important truth was revealed were often slow in coming, or slower than I expected, and there were several, several pages of self-loathing to wade through before they were revealed. But all in good time. We were just getting to know each other, she and I.

With each revelation, my head began to pound. The space between my eyes became a spreading bruise: first a little yellow, then dark lime, then bright blue, and finally deepest black.

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. If she was so fed up with people, I reasoned previously, why not tell those people to fuck off and be done with it?

But it's not that easy, is it, Jean?

I got to know Sasha in four acts. By the third act I began to listen seriously to what she was telling me. It was at this point that the fighting stopped. By the final act, I found myself reaching out desperately for her. Your hand, Sasha, give me your hand!! But when you have taken this much shrapnel in life, you tend to me mistrustful of even the hand that wishes to save you. Save you from life, from yourself.

It's best not to speak of endings. Sometimes they're so final. Sometimes so open-ended. But I like to think that wherever Sasha is, she has found some kind of peace in her life. Or is happily, finally taking the big sleep she so desperately wanted but could not give to herself.
(less)

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Sep 13, 2007 Arielle rated it 5 of 5 stars

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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Oct 11, 2011 Bill Kerwin rated it 4 of 5 stars

A clear-eyed chronicle of desperation etched in diamond-hard prose. It amazes me how any book so filled with despair could be so completely free of self-pity, and how any book consisting entirely of an inward monologue could contain such vivid realistic details and make Paris in the '30's come alive!

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Jul 22, 2012 Selby rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Goddamnit Jean Rhys wrote the most terrifying little masterpieces. My soul can barely handle these scary little descents into despair.

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Jun 11, 2012 christa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Jennifer Egan included the novel “Good Morning, Midnight” by Jean Rhys as part of a swag bag during the PEN Festival in April. She was asked to curate a book bag for guests staying at a certain hotel and selected 12, including this one. This is like the coolest idea ever, especially since it was Egan who could have added a bag of Spit-Dipped Apricots to the bag and I would have added it to my Amazon Wish List.

I like knowing what Jennifer Egan wants people to read and even just a short few sente...more Jennifer Egan included the novel “Good Morning, Midnight” by Jean Rhys as part of a swag bag during the PEN Festival in April. She was asked to curate a book bag for guests staying at a certain hotel and selected 12, including this one. This is like the coolest idea ever, especially since it was Egan who could have added a bag of Spit-Dipped Apricots to the bag and I would have added it to my Amazon Wish List.

I like knowing what Jennifer Egan wants people to read and even just a short few sentences on why. (She calls this one “tough, bleak and deeply atmospheric”). I wish authors were always posting 12 books for people to read and I wish they re-evaluated that list every couple of years. What are Don Delillo’s 12 books? And Haruki Murakami. Someone get me Joan Didion.

I might have to come up with my own.

As for “Good Morning, Midnight,” the story centers on Sasha Jansen. If only she had a different hair color, a new hat, things would change for the superstitious, unlucky and aging wanderer. A different hotel room. The cafe across the street rather than this one, where the proprietor knows her as a woman who cries after a certain amount of sips.

Sasha has returned to Paris in this stream of consciousness novel. A friend in London has tugged her up from the gutter, dusted her off, given her some money and sent her off to fix herself. But Paris is dangerous for her. It’s filled with places that triggers from when she lived there five years earlier and went through a wild ride with her new husband. He eventually left her broke and pregnant. The baby died. She overstayed her welcome at the neighborhood bars. Her decision making skills were muddied with drink and she built a reputation for herself as a cryer.

Now, back in Paris she’s got a room at a hotel. She shares a floor with a man who’s always running around in a nightshirt and giving her looks. She takes sleeping pills to sleep and drinks throughout the day. Sometimes she meets men to talk to her at night, but they’re seemingly always looking for a little more and less than she has to give them. Sometimes she makes plans to meet them again and doesn’t show up. And on and on and on it goes. Though I hadn’t heard of this book until recently, I know I’ve read pieces of this before -- maybe in collections of quotes?

“I have been here five days. I have decided on a place to eat in at midday, a place to eat in at night, a place to have my drink in after dinner. I have arranged my little life.”

Or:

“Today I must be very careful. Today I have left my armour at home.”

When this novel was written in the late 1930s, this hadn’t really been done: Sad, sad drunk wandering around Paris and wondering why she never just flung herself into the Seine. It was, apparently, dismissed as too depressing and was only reconsidered years later when it was picked up to be produced as a radio program and it turned out that Rhys wasn’t dead -- she was just living some place, constantly hammered out of her gourd. Anyway, now this story happens all the time. I read a version of it earlier this year called “Green Girl.” It is pretty grim with no sign of things picking up -- at least no more than when her friend dusted her off during a failed intervention.

Still, there are touches of wry humor that remain despite her desperate circumstances.

“My life, which seems so simple and monotonous, is really a complicated affair of cafes where they like me and cafes where they don’t, streets that are friendly, streets that aren’t, rooms where I might be happy, rooms where I never shall be, looking-glasses I look nice in, looking-glasses I don’t, dresses that will be lucky, dresses that won’t and so on.” (less)

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Jun 20, 2011 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

It had come to seem like it is time that I went past my shallow reading in Rhys, mostly just Wide Saragaso Sea and a short story in an anthology. I'm lucky, because my girlfriend has some others on the bookshelf, so I grabbed this one.

I think it's really good, and definitely in the range of what Rhys, and a lot of novelists of the period do-- she zeroes in on the emotional life of her narrator and makes us breathe that person's air, in this case a down on her luck drinker in Paris. She's overcom...more

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Feb 20, 2010 K.D. Oliveros rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Those who want to be lonely

Recommended to K.D. by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

Shelves: 1001-non-core, french

Ten days ago, my brother read this book and gave it a 5-star rating. He said: "this book, I think, will handily win the award of being The Loneliest Book Ever, and its main protagonist, Sasha Jansen, The Loneliest Character Ever to Come Out in a Work of Fiction."

I oftentimes agree to his opinion and share almost the same taste when it comes to books. However, I am giving this only a 3-star (which means I like it) but not higher (because I neither really like it nor amazed).

I think the main reaso...more

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Feb 09, 2010 Sophie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

'I understand' she said, 'I understand. All the same...Sometimes I'm just as unhappy as you are. But that's not to say that I let everybody see it.'

I had looked at this, I had looked at that, I had looked at the people passing in the street and at a shop-window full of artificial limbs.

But careful, careful! Don't get excited. You know what happens when you get excited and exalted, don't you?...Yes...And then, you know how you collapse like a pricked balloon, don't you? Having no staying power......more

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Jul 19, 2009 Robert Cooper rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a well-written autobiographical novel (one of many) by Jean Rhys, this one set in Paris where she has been dumped by her Dutch husband of several years, whom she met after being dumped by her “English Gentleman” boyfriend back in London. The novel switches between present and past, the present focusing on her brief and strange relationships with two Russians and then a giggolo, down-and-outers who pick her up while she’s boozing to escape the feeling that she’s an alien abandoned among...more This is a well-written autobiographical novel (one of many) by Jean Rhys, this one set in Paris where she has been dumped by her Dutch husband of several years, whom she met after being dumped by her “English Gentleman” boyfriend back in London. The novel switches between present and past, the present focusing on her brief and strange relationships with two Russians and then a giggolo, down-and-outers who pick her up while she’s boozing to escape the feeling that she’s an alien abandoned among hostile and idiotic humans. Even for the 1930s, deep in the Depression and with world war impending, Rhys had a very grim view of the world, and wrote from a tone of deep sadness, even despair—but wrote wonderfully well, with an artlessly artful simplicity and directness that hold up very well. See and hear for yourself:

Walking in the night with the dark houses over you, like monsters. If you have money and friends, houses are just houses with steps and a front-door—friendly houses where the door opens and somebody meets you, smiling. If you are quite secure and your roots are well struck-in, they know. They stand back respectfully waiting for the poor devil without any friends and wthout any money. Then they step forward, the waiting houses, to frown and crush. No hospitable doors, no lit windows, just frowning darkness. Frowning and leering and sneering, the houses, one after another. Tall cubes of darkness, with two lighted eyes at the top to sneer. And they know who to frown at. They know as well as the policeman on the corner…

It was then that I had the bright idea of drinking myself to death. Thirty-five pounds of the legacy had accummulated, it seemed. That ought to do the trick.
I did try, too. I’ve had enough of those streets that sweat a cold, yellow slime, of hostile people, of crying myself to sleep every night. I’ve had enough of thinking, enough of remembering. Now whisky, rum, gin, sherry, vermouth, wine with the bottles labelled ‘Dum vivimus, vivamus….’ Drink, drink, drink….As soon as I sober up I start again. I have to force it down sometimes. You’d think I’d get delirium tremens or something.

I have no pride—no pride, no name, no face, no country. I don’t belong anywhere. Too sad, too sad…. It doesn’t matter, there I am, like one of those straws which floats round the edge of a whirlpool and is gradually sucked into the center, the dead center, where everything is stagnant, everything is calm. Two-pound-ten a week and a room just off Gray’s Inn Road….

In the middle of the night you wake up. You start to cry. What’s happening to me? Oh, my life, oh, my youth….
There’s some wine left in the bottle. You drink it. The clock ticks. Sleep….
People talk about the happy life, but that’s the happy life when you don’t care any longer if you live or die. You only get there after a long time and many misfortunes. And do you think you are left there? Never.
As soon as you have reached this heaven of indifference, you are pulled out of it. From your heaven you have to go back to hell. When you are dead to the world, the world often rescues you, if only to make a figure of fun out of you.

Please, please, monsieur et madame, mister, missis and miss, I am trying so hard to be like you. I know I don’t succeed, but look how hard I try. Three hours to choose a hat; every morning an hour and a half trying to make myself look like everybody else….And mind you, I know that with all this I don’t succeed. Or I succeed in flashes only too damned well….But think how hard I try and how seldom I dare. Think—and have a bit of pity. That is, if you ever think, you apes, which I doubt.

This damned room—it’s saturated with the past….It’s all the rooms I’ve ever slept in, all the streets I’ve ever walked in. Now the whole thing moves in an ordered, undulating procession past my eyes. Rooms, streets, streets, rooms….
(less)

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Apr 23, 2012 Sally rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: country-france, place-paris

This was my fifth book for the 24-hour read-a-thon on Sunday! I grabbed it off my shelf because it's super-skinny. I have absolutely no idea what made me buy it now, unless it was at one of those "fill a bag for $5" things where I just put it in because it's so skinny.

The writing was gorgeous... but it really felt like just wave after wave of pretty words, washing over me without being absorbed. I really couldn't tell you what the plot was at all. It was very gentle and rambly, sort of reminded...more

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Feb 12, 2010 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book rightfully deserves five stars. For if awards are given to books, like they are people, and prizes are given to the most this and the most that, this book, I think, will handily win the award of being The Loneliest Book Ever, and its main protagonist, Sasha Jansen, The Loneliest Character Ever to Come Out in a Work of Fiction.

The prose is interspersed with French. But those who do not know the language [like me:] can just go on ignoring the French. The English alone, sparse as it is, h...more

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Aug 03, 2012 Adam rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 grimmer than any of them.

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Dec 19, 2011 Richard rated it 1 of 5 stars

Rating: A grudging full 1* of five

I am not a woman. I think one needs to be a woman to appreciate Jean Rhys. I think one needs to be a Lifetime/WE/Oxygen viewer to appreciate Jean Rhys.

Sophia is a fallen woman returning to the scene of the crimes she committed in her youth. Paris being the venue. The details are too tedious to go into here, but suffice it to say that this dimwitted tree-sloth of a souse is almost, but not quite, as much fun to hang around with as a tranquilized heifer.

I hated th...more

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Dec 31, 2010 Shannon rated it 5 of 5 stars

When reading this story you become a bit confused. You are confused on to what is happening to the main character. However, you soon realize that this women named Sasha is going from telling stories of the past to the present. In the book "Good Morning, Midnight" the story is very depressing as is the main character. When reading this book, you yourself as a reader has to be emoitonally prepared. This book can take a very big toll on you and effect, as it did to me.
It starts when Sasha comes b...more

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May 10, 2010 Becki Warner rated it 5 of 5 stars

I could not put this book down, except when translating the French! The main character, who calls herself Sasha, is emotional open and extremely vulnerable. It is so very easy to identify with her and at the same time so very frightening. Sasha's experiences of the past and present flow together at once and Sasha's pain is slowly unraveled to make her so tangible that she really exists, but to touch her would be the most painful experience.
I am left amazed that anyone could pull off such a char...more

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Dec 02, 2010 Zooey rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book generally gets good reviews and I, for one, agree completely. This book describes a very moving story of a woman who is desperately trying to escape the past and run from the future. Sasha, or Sophia Jansen (she changed her name, somewhere in her life) is a very damaged person, which is why she has made up her mind to drink herself to death. Only, instead of doing this in one evening like the teen trend is nowadays, she takes a period of months or even years to accomplish this.

Sophia (...more This book generally gets good reviews and I, for one, agree completely. This book describes a very moving story of a woman who is desperately trying to escape the past and run from the future. Sasha, or Sophia Jansen (she changed her name, somewhere in her life) is a very damaged person, which is why she has made up her mind to drink herself to death. Only, instead of doing this in one evening like the teen trend is nowadays, she takes a period of months or even years to accomplish this.

Sophia (I like that name better, so that is what I will be calling her) spends her days avoiding certain places, avoiding crying in public and avoiding people. The book is written entirely from her point of view, so we learn that she is past 'being liked, I just want to be left alone'. The striking thing is that throughout the book, she doesn't allow herself to be left alone. She meets Russians and a Maroccan, and with them she visits places that bring up a lot of (bad) memories to her.

Although it seems unlikely, there is a beautiful character development. We learn about her past, what makes her so damaged and caused her lack of trust in people. She generally finds people cruel, but then someone crosses her path and makes her re-think things. We read about Sophia in different stages or phases in her life, with different thoughts and different feelings. The captivating element of this book is not so much the actual events, but really how human the main character actually is.

Loneliness, low self-esteem, irrational thoughts, not knowing who we can trust and trusting the wrong people... it's something we can all relate too. We all come across it once in our lives, whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not. And this book expresses all these thoughts that we are constantly denying ourselves to think. And that is what makes it worthy of at least four stars.

There are sudden flashbacks in the books that pop up in the middle of the present. Really, it is confusing sometimes. I've held the book upside-down, trying to discover a print that said 'time-machine now' or 'dream mode on'. No such thing. This is a book for which you need your attention permanently. I think I lost mine near the end, because the ending of the book was lost on me. And apparently, on Google too, cause I could not find an explanation anywhere.

I took off half a star for hurting a kitten. I think I'm going to start teaching writing classes and I'll open with the question: What do we do with animals? And then the answer: We love them! We save them! We set them free! And the latter in such a way that does not involve shoo-ing them out of a room and out on the street where it gets run over.

In the end, I think that Sophia's life has been rather tragic and the author has done the best job in trying to convey that message to her readers. Really, after Sophacles' Oedipus Rex, only Hallmark movies involve more tears. Like the one I've got playing on the background now, where somebody is declaring that his significant other 'should not come to hospital when he's dying, because he rather disappears when he feels that his time is coming'. Sad, no? Definitely yes!

To those that are looking for an eventful story, you can just forget about this one. Not much is happening, but the raw emotion is enough to make this book a worthy classic, one to be remembered forever.

~Zooey Iding (less)

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Aug 03, 2009 Deja rated it 3 of 5 stars

Didn't like this one nearly as much as After Leaving Mr. Mackensie, but it was still quite good. It got better towards the end, and I found myself wanting to rearrange it so that the last third came first and provided context for the rest of what was there.

Overall it felt more raw. There's an unpolished, desperate sadness about it that makes me feel like Rhys took her own sorrows and splattered them on the page. Which is what we all do, in a way. But Mr. Mackensie had a more palatable distance,...more

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Aug 08, 2011 Stefani rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: depressing, paris-in-the-30-s

Nostalgia is a funny thing. Time renders past memories in a sort of blurred reality that filters out all the negative events, leaving only the good stuff in to warp your perspective about how great things used to be by comparison. It seems to be a general rule that this only applies to negative life events like high school prom and, oh hell, high school in general.

So, the main character Sasha wanders around Paris in this unblinking haze of past events that she can't escape from which continually...more

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Mar 05, 2010 Nenette rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was excited to start on this book as my goodreads friends gave it high ratings. But boy, was I disappointed. Clearly Sasha Jensen was so depressed and out of it, by the way she related her story. Probably the style just was not in my taste, but one moment she talks of the present time, and suddenly she's back in the past - and I can only assume about the switch in timeframe. Also the question of whatever happened to the other characters is always at the back of my mind. Her husband abandoned h...more

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Jul 25, 2012 BohoMon rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Plath, Lessing fans

Shelves: 2012-read, fiction

This was one of those not-too-common books that whilst I'm enjoying it, I also want it to end sooner rather than later.

Despite a lean book, it's relentless in its claustrophobic dissatisfaction. There are a few significant events, and one that seems the catalyst for the darkest hours ahead, mostly told in stream-of-consciousness flashback. Otherwise, the protagonist goes mostly through a daily process of inconsequential tragedy. It's the undramatic daily grind of emotional survival that wears he...more

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Feb 26, 2008 Brenna rated it 3 of 5 stars

This really is a good book taken on its own. The drawback of Jean Rhys is that you can 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.

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Dec 29, 2011 Alison rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this because I so enjoyed Wide Sargasso Sea some 20 years ago. Did not enjoy this one so much, or maybe it was because I picked it up and put it down so many times, despite its brevity. Not the best book to do that. It's very stream-of-consciousness, which makes it a bit disjointed, especially in Part 1, before you really get a sense of what's going on. Fortunately I know enough French to catch most of the phrases and passages in that language, but still...
Even so, a compelling portrait o...more

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Dec 07, 2008 Peggy rated it 5 of 5 stars

The desolation of Sasha Jensen's psychic landscape fragments her story into isolated moments of pain contrasted with long, drawn out scenes of a predatory Parisian nightlife. Tense yet poetic, Jean Rhys’ novel speaks to me of a confused sadness that envelopes her characters, all of whom seem wounded in one way or another. Sasha, though vulnerable, remains powerful and autonomous in a world that dissatisfies and disappoints her at nearly every turn. It’s a wonderful book that calls for the repres...more

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About Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys originally Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was a Caribbean novelist who wrote in the mid 20th century. Her first four novels were published during the 1920s and 1930s, but it was not until the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966 that she emerged as a significant literary figure. A "prequel" to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea won a prestigious WH Smith Literary Award in...more

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“Today I must be very careful, today I have left my armor at home.” — 74 people liked it

“We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich, we can't all be lucky - and it would be so much less fun if we were... There must be the dark background to show up the bright colours. ” — 37 people liked it

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