Good Morning, Midnight

Having now soldiered through the fourth of Jean Rhys’s autobiographical, alcohol-and-female-dependency-themed novels, I really don’t see its author as “one of the foremost writers of the twentieth-century.” Tales of passive, suggestible, self-pitying, depressive protagonists drifting through life, attempting to sponge off, cling to, and be saved by a succession of invariably unworthy men—sordid dramas which unfold in seedy, sometimes bedbug-infested hotels and squalid boarding houses—don’t do much for me. Stylistically, Rhys may have been a competent enough writer, but style can only take bleak content so far. I don’t see good evidence here that it can turn dark material into literature worth reading. While pushing show more through these novels over the last couple of weeks, I frequently thought how unfortunate it was for Rhys that she didn’t have access to Alcoholics Anonymous or quality psychotherapy. Hers was no way to go through life. Given the abuse her body suffered, it’s a marvel she was able to write at all and very surprising that she lived into her late eighties.

I think Good Morning, Midnight is Rhys’s most nihilistic work. In it, the depressive protagonist, “Sasha”—observed by a London friend to be laid ever lower by age and drink—is sent to Paris for a couple of weeks’ rest on that friend’s dime. How anyone could believe that a woman in this state might benefit from such a solitary trip is beyond me. Perhaps the friend needed respite from witnessing the spiral of addiction. Once in France, Sasha encounters random men in bars or on the streets—a couple of Russians; a young man, René, a French-Canadian who has recently escaped from his Foreign Legion post in Morocco; and a repugnant commercial traveller who is staying in the same hotel.

The slim plot Rhys offers consists of Sasha drifting from café to café, or restaurant to cabaret, with one or another of these men, a drink at every stop. The reader is also given the woman’s hazy recollections of a failed marriage years before to the shifty Enno, whom she wed when young in order to escape London. Once hopeful that the marriage would be for all-time, in looking back, Sasha regards its end—with Enno’s abandonment of her after the (merciful) death of their infant son—as entirely foreseeable and inevitable. One of the few diversions from a seemingly endless series of scenes in which Sasha fails to connect can be found in the two hours she spends in a Parisian hat shop. (The right hat is critical for preserving any vestige of dignity that remains. The goal: “look normal enough so people won’t stare at you.”) Not surprisingly, though, the episode doesn’t add much interest overall.

I think I knew early on that Rhys wasn’t going to be for me; nevertheless, I effortfully worked through the complete novels in the order that Diana Athill arranged them in the Norton edition. It didn’t take me long to know that, with the possible exception of Wide Sargasso Sea, I was reading them to have read them—to be done with them. And now, thank God, I am. For good. show less

Rhys is such a good writer, never a wasted word, such nuanced observations of people and places. She captures the inner lives of her main characters with devastating clarity and intensity, reaching a peak with Good Morning, Midnight.

Sasha is alone in Paris. She had lived there in her youth, when she could rely on her looks to find a man to look after her, but now she is in her forties, conscious of losing her looks, and is not having the same success. A relative has lent her money to move from London to Paris, out of the way. Sasha's life has been so sad and she has been treated so cruelly so often that she expects to be.

This sounds so bleak, and it is, but Sasha sees herself clearly, with wit, and doesn't take herself too seriously. show more Her story is an interior monologue told with flashbacks. A room today reminds her of rooms years ago, the life she lived then, the man she was with. show less

Wow, this is a dark book. It’s very short, but I had to put it down halfway through and didn’t pick it up for a week. I was a little hesitant to go back to it, even though I thought it was really good, because it’s so grim.

It’s seen through the eyes of someone who is so depressed, worn out and despondent that they can’t even think straight. The writing captures that perfectly, but also makes it confusing since it’s written from a first person perspective. It leaps around without explanation, and even though I often hate that this isn’t actually that hard to follow and makes perfect sense in the style of the book, and doesn’t feel like a writing exercise or an author showing you how clever they are.

I’m going to have show more to read this again at some point. It is the kind of book that is probably better read all at once, at least for me, and will probably gel a little more with a second reading. show less

“What happened to you, what happened?” he says. “Something bad must have happened to make you like this.”
“One thing? It wasn’t one thing. It took years. It was a slow process.”

When I closed this book with a thud and looked around my dimly lit room then out the window I realised the rain hasn’t stopped since morning. I then silently mourned for Good Morning, Midnight for its tangible and despairing sadness. The excruciating aimless wandering and temporary respite fumbled, rolled, and clung upon pleasure on different, lonely beds, shots of forgetting through alcohol, and the close company of death through sleep. This novel pelted with tears and grovelled with wanting; wanting without knowing, crying with knowing too much. show more The aftermath of a failed marriage with prematurely cut motherhood consistently questioned and hunted for both purpose and reason. Their persistence gnawed on the novel’s distinct structure which effectively ignited the burden of longing and loneliness. Perhaps, at the same time, it has set itself on fire and burned hope and love to ashes. Although it can frustrate with its frenzied agitation and confuse with its somewhat nonlinear narration, Good Morning, Midnight meanders in its gloomy skies and lets it all rain down without much care for flooding and landslide. All the whilst living slowly drowns within its confines. show less

A depressing read about depressing times in Paris in the 1930s, although also admirable in its dry, cutting voice of Sophia Jansen as she descends into drink while reminscincing about the loss of her child and abandonment by her husband there some years before. Rhys has a keen ear for the downtrodden, independent women beaten down by men and society in that era (or any era). She doesn't go crazy all at once, it is a slow drawn out process.

This is a deceptively short and easy book. While it can be read quickly, the constant morphing of reality makes the simple story difficult to read, to the point where the ending hovers between a dream-state and reality. Alcohol, despair, and loneliness are all themes that permeate this novel and while it is bleak and grim, it is also punctuated with hope and liveliness, which brings the reader back for more... only to create a vortex back into the depths of sadness.

While I can't say I loved the book, it certainly didn't leave me indifferent, more a sense of unease than a revelation of the human heart. There was also a feeling that none of us are immune to such a fate.

One of my favorite novels of all time.

Each of Rhys' four autobiographical novels are the story of the same kind of woman, each another decade into the disaster of her life. This, naturally, is the last of them - Sasha is the most broken, the most broke, and the most haunted by the many ways her life has disappointed her expectations. Written in a fragmented internal dialogue, deeply indebted to Joyce and Woolf the swirling of memory, of drunken present, and broken thoughts is my ideal.