Good Morning, Midnight

Product Description

An unforgettable portrait of a woman bravely confronting loneliness & despair in her quest for self-determination, Jean Rhys` ” Good Morning Midnight”

Includes:: an introduction by A.L. Kennedy in ” Penguin Modern Classics”. In 1930s Paris, where one cheap hotel room is very like another, a young woman is teaching herself indifference. She has escaped personal tragedy & has come to France to find courage & 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. 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 & complicated than she could expect, but whose confession is flecked with triumph & elation. One of the most honest & distinctive British novelists of the twentieth century, Jean Rhys wrote about women with perception & sensitivity in an innovative & often controversial way. Jean Rhys (1894-1979) was born in Dominica. Coming to England aged 16, she drifted into various jobs before moving to Paris, where she began writing & was `discovered` by Ford Madox Ford. Her novels, often portraying women as underdogs out to exploit their sexualities, were ahead of their time & only modestly successful. From 1939 (when ” Good Morning, Midnight” was written) onwards she lived reclusively, & was largely forgotten when she made a sensational comeback with her account of Jane Eyre`s Bertha Rochester, ” Wide Sargasso Sea”, in 1966. If you enjoyed ” Good Morning Midnight”, you might like Rhys` ” Voyage in the Dark”, also available in ” Penguin Modern Classics”. ” Her eloquence in the language of human sexual transactions is chilling, cynical, & surprisingly moving”. (A.L. Kennedy).