This is Jean Rhys' first novel (1928), not as strong a book as Good
Morning, Midnight (1970, p. 131) but firmer in narrative design
than Voyage in the Dark. And even if her heroine, always the same
haphazard young woman at the loose end of life, is a little younger
and to begin with more hopeful, there are other points of similar
recognition: Paris, "The unvarying background. Knowing waiters,
clouds of smoke, the smell of drink." - the cafes and little hotels
frequented by impermanent drifters, watchers. This time she's Marya
who has married the charming if improvident Stephan, now arrested
and jailed for selling stolen pictures, leaving her without a
centime. She is taken in as a protegee by an English couple, the
Heidlers, and quickly becomes a love object for H.J., a hate object
for his wife, and the easy victim of both. The story has its own
febrile fascination and once again Miss Rhys' dragonfly perceptions
skim familiar surfaces (fear, loneliness, abandonment) with a
momentary insistence and involvement. (Kirkus Reviews)
Living in Paris with her reckless, vagabond husband Stephan, Marya is very near to being happy. She enjoys their haphazard existence, never questioning how he lives, never wanting to know the truth. When Stephan is suddenly imprisoned she is left penniless and alone. Taken up by a sophisticated English couple, the Heidlers, who gradually overwhelm her with their own desires, Marya finds her sense of reality slipping further and further away.
Set against a background of winter-wet streets and smoke-filled cafés, Jean Rhys's first novel is both poignant and disturbingly intimate in its vivid depiction of a woman on her own.
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