Jean Rhys (Mrs Tilden Smith) author of Voyage in the Dark, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, Good Morning Midnight, etc. Tales of passive, suggestible, self-pitying, depressive protagonists drifting through life, attempting to sponge off, cling to, and be saved by a succession of invariably unworthy men—sordid dramas which unfold in seedy, sometimes bedbug-infested hotels and squalid boarding houses—don’t do much for me. Everything about Sasha, our narrator, has seen better days, including her fur coat which she wears as a kind of memory mantra of better days.

It's a small novel in its own brief and perfect right, depicting the emotional and sensitive nature of trying to find stability again. When depression is no longer a novelty but the dominant state in which a person operates for long periods of time, there is no room for self-pity or compassion.An unforgettable portrait of a woman bravely confronting loneliness and despair in her quest for self-determination, Jean Rhys's Good Morning Midnight includes an introduction by A. Is the only choice to somehow be with a man who will not leave you, who will stay long enough to make you believe that happiness is possible, that life is not such a drudge, an unending rollercoaster, up and down, up and down but somehow not like a rollercoaster because more downs than ups? Rhys, donning the alter ego Sasha, stands as a testament to the profound love wielded by highly intellectual women.

Thus, while the novel is entirely steeped in Sasha's fraught consciousness, it moves the reader into the mode of sociopolitical critique.

Sasha does have a saving grace though, that being humour, her willingness to see the comedy, even absurdity, in the most bitter memories and humiliating encounters, and there would be many of them. I had read that it was vaguely autobiographical, and I sincerely hope that is not the case, for this is a book of so much despair and darkness that it was a struggle to continue to read. City of both love and desperation, perfect for a lover’s mindless hedonism and exuberant fatalism, as well as its ensuing void.