Good Morning Midnight is the third book I’ve read from Jean Rhys after Quartet and Wide Saragossa Sea. I love both of these books, and in this book, the author took me from London to Paris. I always found myself dreaming of Sasha’s rooms and the streets she walked at night. Like the cold of Paris, Sasha’s sorrow also surrounded me. Even though I don’t like the stream-of-consciousness technique, this book managed to reach me in a way I didn’t expect.
A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That’s all any room is.
Jean Rhys
Good Morning Midnight tells the story of Sasha, who is now in her forties and is back in Paris after staying in London for a long time. Looking for those beautiful days of the past in Paris, Sasha does not trust her present and future. With all her loneliness, she stays in gloomy rooms in Paris and drinks in cafes she likes and dislikes. But one evening, a new man comes into her life. Sasha welcomes this man with all her honesty and sadness. And as the reader, you get to read an unforgettable end.
Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only – to be left alone.
Jean Rhys
Reading Jean Rhys is an experience, whether you like her or not you’ve got to read at least one of her books. Enjoy!
About the book: Good Morning Midnight
Jean Rhys’s Good Morning Midnight is an unforgettable portrait of a woman bravely confronting loneliness and despair in her quest for self-determination.
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 however and seek independence. She tells herself to expect nothing, especially not kindness, least of all from men. Tomorrow, however she resolves, she will dye her hair blonde. Jean Rhys was a talent before her time with an impressive ability to express the anguish of young women. In Good Morning, Midnight Rhys created the powerfully modern portrait of Sophia Jansen, whose emancipation is far more painful and complicated than she could expect, but whose confession is flecked with triumph and elation.
About the author: Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys, CBE, was a mid-20th-century novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica. From the age of 16, she was mainly resident in England, where she was sent for her education. She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
