"I don't wannabe in Eng-a-lund babee, no,no,no." It would be so cool if Amy Winehouse could write like Jean Rhys. There's not much new under the sun. The long, smoke-trailing, downward spiral is a story that dates back to ... the sun, and Icarus. A young woman has a bit of bad luck and never quite gets back on her game. A nick here, a chunk there - a pregnancy, a lover's pregnant pause - and her panache is an aching panic. Rhys tells the story masterfully. Anna's frequent island flashbacks are colorful and poetic - Faulkneresque, in fact. But the narrative never falters in its beat. And Rhys's ear for dialogue makes each minor character distinct and memorable. And to think I picked this novel up at a garage sale years ago, and never got around to reading it until April 2008. I tell ya, it's like not discovering Nick Drake until the Pink Moon VW commercial. ( )

4153 Voyage in the Dark, by Jean Rhys (read 12 Apr 2006) I read this author's Wide Sargasso Sea in 1998 with much appreciation so I decided to read this 1934 novel by her. It tells of a naive Caribbean island native who in 1913 or 1914 goes to London and falls into prostitution. The central character is an annoying character but the story is told in clear and telling prose. ( )

The first half of this novel really grabbed me by the horns and I couldn't wait to get to it.
Like a new fancy friend that you just can't get your fill. You have a brief, bright, memory-creating affair. Then they just disappear and neither is sad because you were just happy for the experience.
The writing is beautiful.
I would recommend this book, I rather enjoyed it. Especially, if you are a Rhys fan. ( )

Voyage In The Dark is the story of a young woman, Anna Morgan - she says she's 18, and that may be true - born and brought up in the West Indies, and brought to the UK by her (English) stepmother after her father's death. As the story begins, Anna is a chorus girl, tramping the streets of an English seaside town, looking for a boarding-house. A couple of days later, she meets a man - well-off, and older than her. They begin a relationship - but although he is fond of her, she is not the sort of woman that he would seriously consider settling down with.

You can guess what happens after that. This is an often-told story - and even the opening scene (a "nice" girl looking for a room to rent, with a female companion who's tougher and more worldly-wise) seems to be familiar from any number of other books. Jean Rhys plays up the predictability of these stories - describing the town, Anna thinks "There was always a little grey street leading to the stage-door of the theater and another little grey street where your lodgings were, and rows of little houses with chimneys like the funnels of dummy steamers and smoke the same colour as the sky; and a grey stone promenade running hard, naked and straight by the side of the grey-brown or grey-green sea".

Everything is told as Anna experiences it - what she sees, hears, feels and thinks. Rather like The Curious Adventure Of The Dog In The Night-Time, sometimes you have to work out how the other characters are reacting from the way that Anna quotes their words and describes their facial expressions. And Anna is an outsider. Throughout the book, events and statements constantly trigger memories of her childhood in Dominica, which are much more vividly described than what happens in the present. Anna often seems to connect more with her memories than with the people around her - which contributes to her downfall (other women in the book, who are in similar situations, constantly urge her to take more control of her life). Equally, Anna rarely describes how she's feeling directly - but the details that she notes about her surroundings leave you in no doubt about her emotional state ("this [landlady] had bulging eyes, dark blobs in a long pink face, like a prawn"). The book is also full of gaps and ellipses - all the things that Anna can't bring herself to think ("Don't think of it, don't think of it. Because thinking of it makes it happen"). This seems to highlight the hypocrisy and euphemism surrounding sex at the time. You feel that Anna is out of her depth not just because of her passivity, but because she is used to a world where things are more direct.

The quality of the writing more than makes up for the predictability of the story - but this is still a phenomenally depressing book. The other women may be more savvy than Anna, but that doesn't make them any happier. And the portrayal of the way that men see these women is pretty bleak: "Have you ever thought that a girl's clothes cost more than the girl inside them?", one asks.

Ultimately, then, very worth reading - but I'm not sure I will be hurrying to take it off the shelf again. ( )