Voyage In The Dark

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Brought to life with startling autobiographical detail Jean Rhys Good Morning Midnight" is a poignant portrait of a woman fighting to retain her integrity after being set adrift in a foreign country. This " Penguin Classics" edition

Includes:: an introduction by Carole Angier. It was as if a curtain had fallen hiding everything I had ever known says Anna Morgan eighteen years old & catapulted to England from the West Indies after the death of her beloved father. Working as a chorus girl Anna drifts into the demi-monde of Edwardian London. But there dismayed by the unfamiliar cold & greyness she is absolutely alone & unconsciously floating from innocence to harsh experience. Her childish dreams have been replaced by the harsher reality of living in a mans world where all charity has its price " Voyage in the Dark" was first published in 1934 but it could have been written today. It is the story of an unhappy love affair a portrait of a hypocritical society & an exploration of exile & breakdown; all written in Jean Rhys hauntingly simple & beautiful style. 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 Eyres" Bertha Rochester " Wide Sargasso Sea" in 1966. If you enjoyed " Voyage in the Dark" you might like James Joyces "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" also available in " Penguin Classics". "A wonderful bitter-sweet book written with disarming simplicity" (Esther Freud " Express"). " Her eloquence in the language of human sexual transactions is chilling cynical & surprisingly moving". (A.L. Kennedy)."