About this title: Jean Rhys was a talent before her time with an impressive ability to express the anguish of young, single 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. One of the most honest and distinctive British novelists of the 20th Century, Jean Rhys wrote about women with perception and sensitivity in an innovative and often controversial way. In "Good Morning, Midnight" (1939) she creates an unforgettable portrait of ...
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Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Fine. 0393303942 Ships next business day. NEW/UNREAD! ! ! Text is Clean and Unmarked! --Be Sure to Compare Seller Feedback and Ratings before Purchasing--Has a small black line on bottom/exterior edge of pages. May have light shelf wear to cover from storage, if any. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books
Date Published: 1974
ISBN-13:9780394710426ISBN:0394710428
Description: Very Good. From the shelves of my store. Light shelf wear. Great book for a reasonable and competitive price. Buy risk free and enjoy. I will ship promptly in a bubble wrap mailer. read more
Description: Good. 0140029613 Condition: GOOD. (Book may have one or a combination of the following characteristics: former library book, dust jacket missing, cover wear, name written inside cover, considerable underlining/highlighting, remainder mark, binding loose, binding slants, pages tanning / curling, etc. Overall, the book is in decent shape. This is a blanket description. Please email us if you require a specific, detailed description of the book condition. We will typically respond within one week ... read more
"No one better than Jean Rhys in describing what it's like to be poor, powerless, and female. Her characters spend their days in fear of the human race until they can't bear it any longer, and burst forth in destructive anger. The settings are cheap hotels, and the scene with the bugs coming out of the wall at night in this novel is not to be missed."
"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 of an arc.
There's also more untranslated French here, which makes the read confusing if you're a non-french-speaking philistine like myself.
*** Addition ***
Must add this bit from this book, which I saved and wrote my journal and plan to plaster to an idea wall someday soon. Not even sure why I like it so, but I do:
"I want a long, calm book about people with large incomes--a book like a flat green meadow and the sheep feeding in it."
Maybe I like it because it's so not what this book is like, and there's something delicious about saying that within its walls. Maybe its because I know that feeling--not just of wanting to read a book like that, but of wanting to BE a book like that--a calm book about a person with a large income, full of well-fed, drowsy sheep. If only."
"Written from an emotionally charged women's perspective, I find novels like Good Morning, Midnight, strangely refreshing. I also wonder whether it is a bad sign that I find myself relating to women like Sophia rather than the manufactured 'realistic' women that plague our best selling novels at the moment. Set against the haunting background of Parisian streets, GMM focusses on Sophia, a woman who returns to Paris in hope of reliving the life she had when she was younger. It is a difficult read as she continually makes the same bad decisions she did in her youth and her anxiety as she feels that she is becoming invisible in her surroundings. (Particularly poignant part where she is looking in the mirror and does not recognise herself). Her quest to find the happiness of her youth results in her haunting the same seedy joints, drinking too much alcohol and meeting men that treat her badly. A heart-wrenching yet refreshingly real account of a woman on the verge of a breakdown trying to find her place in a world that has moved on. Enchanting."
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