Good Morning, Midnight is the Sub Rosa reading group selection for March. The book discussion will be held on Saturday, March 29 at 6:30pm.
“As sharp and lucent and alarming as a piece of broken crystal.”
— Deborah Eisenberg, author of Your Duck Is My Duck
The last of the four novels Jean Rhys wrote in interwar Paris, Good Morning, Midnight is the culmination of a searing literary arc, which established Rhys as an astute observer of human tragedy. Her everywoman heroine, Sasha, must confront the loves— and losses— of her past in this mesmerizing and formally daring psychological portrait.
“Jean Rhys’ (best known for her Jane Eyre retelling Wide Sargasso Sea) Good Morning, Midnight (1939) deals with heavy topics, such as: sexual assault, depression, suicidal ideation, and even infant death as a woman is plagued by otherness, isolation, and depression during her time in Paris. While the novel is incredibly depressing and tragic in some places, you root for Sasha as she struggles to fit in and keep herself alive.”
–review from the tiny journal
“This book is loosely autobiographical which fact I find lends even more sadness to the narrative. Rhys, like Emily Dickinson, fought bravely against her depression and used her writing as an outlet for her emotional turmoil.”
—The Bookbinder’s Daughter
Jean Rhys (1890–1979) was a Dominica-born British novelist known for exploring the lives of marginalized,, often, traumatized women. Famous for the postcolonial Jane Eyre prequel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). She lived a tumultuous, nomadic life, which she translated into sparse, modernist fiction including the acclaimed Good Morning, Midnight (1939), that explores themes of marginalization, poverty, and the crushing weight of the “male gaze,” often featuring characters struggling to survive in a indifferent world.