Books with author Jean Rhys

"No one who reads Good Morning, Midnight will ever forget it." ―New York TimesSasha Jensen has returned to Paris, the city of both her happiest moments and her most desperate. Her past lies in wait for her in cafes, bars, and dress shops, blurring all distinctions between nightmare and reality. When she is picked up by a young man, she begins to feel that she is still capable of desires and emotions. Few encounters in fiction have been so brilliantly conceived, and few have come to a more unforgettable end.

"It is a book that does not invite comparisons. . . . Its excellence is individual, intrinsic; it measures itself against itself."--Saturday Review of Literature Julia Martin is at the end of her rope in Paris. Once beautiful, she was taken care of by men. Now after leaving her last lover, she is running out of luck and chances. A visit to London to see her ailing mother and distrustful sister bring her stark life into full focus. A masterful and terrifying tale from one of the truest voices in twentieth-century fiction.

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 and complicated than she could expect, but whose confession is flecked with triumph and elation. One of the most honest and distinctive British novelists of the 20th Century, Jean Rhys wrote about women with perception and sensitivity in an innovative and often controversial way. In "Good Morning, Midnight" (1939) she creates an unforgettable portrait of a woman forced to confront her inevitable loneliness and despair.

"It is a book that does not invite comparisons. . . . Its excellence is individual, intrinsic; it measures itself against itself."--Saturday Review of LiteratureJulia Martin is at the end of her rope in Paris. Once beautiful, she was taken care of by men. Now after leaving her last lover, she is running out of luck and chances. A visit to London to see her ailing mother and distrustful sister bring her stark life into full focus. A masterful and terrifying tale from one of the truest voices in twentieth-century fiction.

Set in a superficially romantic, between-wars Paris, "Quartet" is a poignant tale of a lonely woman. Set against a background of winter-wet streets, Pernod in smoky cafes and cheap hotel rooms with mauve- flowered wallpaper, Marya tries to make something substantial of her life in order to withstand the unreality of her surroundings. Alone, her Polish husband in prison, she is taken up by an English couple who slowly overwhelm her with their passions. Jean Rhys' first novel is both poignant and disturbingly intimate in its vivid depiction of a woman on her own.