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A review by jennifer
Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys
4.0
I should have loved this, being one of those Joan Didonesque, disconnected-lone-female type novels (and set in Paris no less). That sensation was evoked to great effect in recent books like Outline and Pond, but here Rhys' protagonist, Sasha, does my head in a bit. To be fair, she is a victim of her time—the book is set just before WWII and was published in 1939—and I have been influenced by Jessa Crispin's less than charitable take on Rhys in Crispin's book, The Dead Ladies Project.
In any case, this is a slip of a book and hard to regret reading given the gems that appear in its pages, like the anecdote about a bald, dying woman who comes into a dress shop where Sasha works and wants "something to wear in my hair in the evening." She tries combs and flowers and feathers but leaves without buying anything in the end, chastised by her mortified daughter for being "silly." After they go, Sasha despairs, "Oh, but why not buy her a wig, several decent dresses, as much champagne as she can drink, all the things she likes to eat and oughtn't to, a gigolo if she wants one. One last flare-up and she'll be dead in six months at the outside. That's all you're waiting for, isn't it? But no, you must have the slow death, the bloodless killing that leaves no stain on your conscience..."
Despite its occasional tendency to grate, it is, in the end, a book of great humanity.
In any case, this is a slip of a book and hard to regret reading given the gems that appear in its pages, like the anecdote about a bald, dying woman who comes into a dress shop where Sasha works and wants "something to wear in my hair in the evening." She tries combs and flowers and feathers but leaves without buying anything in the end, chastised by her mortified daughter for being "silly." After they go, Sasha despairs, "Oh, but why not buy her a wig, several decent dresses, as much champagne as she can drink, all the things she likes to eat and oughtn't to, a gigolo if she wants one. One last flare-up and she'll be dead in six months at the outside. That's all you're waiting for, isn't it? But no, you must have the slow death, the bloodless killing that leaves no stain on your conscience..."
Despite its occasional tendency to grate, it is, in the end, a book of great humanity.