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cjsamuel's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
cfrankenfield's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
cameronfrye's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Rhys' prose is so unbelievably stunning and this book is totally gut wrenching. Dreamy and dark, immediate yet detached. There's something about these simple but evocative lines: 'I didn't want to talk to anybody. I felt too much like a ghost'. I mean, haven't we all?
literarycrushes's review against another edition
3.0
After loving A Very Nice Girl by Imogen Crimp, I watched an interview with the author where she discussed the influence of Jean Rhys’ Voyage in the Dark, on her own novel. And honestly, maybe a lot of people had already picked up on that since (as I just learned) it was essentially a reworking of Rhys’ semi-autobiographical novel with many of the same character names and plot lines but with an updated Millennial spin on the novel.
Voyage is heavily based on Rhys’s own experience as a recently arrived immigrant from Dominica to England. The main character, Anna, is depressed and lonely in England, something she frequently expresses indirectly by complaining of the constant cold. She is dubiously employed in a series of traveling shows as a singer/performer but lacks any cohesive direction or experience to call it a career. She undertakes a passionate love affair with a (married) man twenty years her senior, and her life begins to unravel soon after he tries to break up with her for the first time. Her language is crisp and bare but manages to nail her atmosphere prose with very few words. By today’s standards, Anna’s relationship with Walter is relatively tame, but I imagine it must have been a scandal when it was published in 1934.
I read my first Jean Rhys (Good Morning, Midnight) about five years ago, but was not in the right headspace to receive it at the time. I had a much better experience reading my second and look forward to reading more of her work!
Voyage is heavily based on Rhys’s own experience as a recently arrived immigrant from Dominica to England. The main character, Anna, is depressed and lonely in England, something she frequently expresses indirectly by complaining of the constant cold. She is dubiously employed in a series of traveling shows as a singer/performer but lacks any cohesive direction or experience to call it a career. She undertakes a passionate love affair with a (married) man twenty years her senior, and her life begins to unravel soon after he tries to break up with her for the first time. Her language is crisp and bare but manages to nail her atmosphere prose with very few words. By today’s standards, Anna’s relationship with Walter is relatively tame, but I imagine it must have been a scandal when it was published in 1934.
I read my first Jean Rhys (Good Morning, Midnight) about five years ago, but was not in the right headspace to receive it at the time. I had a much better experience reading my second and look forward to reading more of her work!
bluelilyblue's review against another edition
4.0
Most of Jean Rhys's body of work circles around the 'woman feels alienated and lonesome in a big yet awfully insipid city' theme; one would expect such subject matter to grow stale, but (for me) it hasn't. Rhys's prose reads like a staccato--it's dramatic in a quiet and resigned sort of way. Descriptions of the cold London and the sun-soaked West Indies abound as Anna works through the same metaphors, the same memories, the same disappointments and anxieties. Perhaps even better than in Good Morning, Midnight, Rhys gets to the core of the tedium and hopelessness of having to wake up tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, with no end in sight.
marycollins's review against another edition
dark
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
3.5
bigbadbog's review against another edition
4.0
A pensive and reflective novella that can be read through in a day. The contradictions and constant struggles the main character pulls herself through without ever falling in to anger or even disappointment at her situation, instead maintaining her passion for the world, drives the narrative forwards in an engaging way.
Probably at it's most interesting when dealing with race and sexuality, and it's most heartbreaking when detailing her desperate search for love in a world that seems to hate her
Probably at it's most interesting when dealing with race and sexuality, and it's most heartbreaking when detailing her desperate search for love in a world that seems to hate her
ilariasroom's review against another edition
2.0
well. i hope i can manage to write an essay on this for class at least.