Customer Reviews

After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie

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4 star:		(3)
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"After Leaving Mr. MacKenzie" by Jean Rhys easily deserves to be amongst the top 100 English-language novels. In its compact construction, Rhys is able to offer a dense, dark, disturbing, yet beautiful picture of modern life and its limits -- particularly for those who are not "blessed" with wealth.

To read this just as a woman's novel is to do it a great injustice. This is not a story about women, sexual oppression, etc. To read it as such limits Rhys scope and genius. This is a story about the confining, declining nature of contemporary life, as well as a tale about the inability of humans to connect with each other.

Great works of fiction are not 'about' men's or women's issues --they are about humanity and what we've lost and gained. Rhys is amongst the best at holding a mirror.

Rhys out Hemingways Hemingway -- she is brutal, concise and clean, like a knife to the throat. She is truthful -- to the point of pain.

Read "Mr. MacKenzie" then jump to Rhys' "Good Morning, Midnight." The pair say all there is to say about contemporary life.

As someone who has read 50 of the so-called top 100 books, I would place Mackenzie in the top 5. Fitzgerald should have written this well! Gatsby can't hold a candle to Mackenzie.

Despite having been a user of Amazon for some years, I've never before felt impelled to write a review. I looked up "After Leaving Mr Mc'Kensie" on a whim, but having seen the reviews given it by "lily d" and "njl" I decided to finally add my five cents to the Amazon site. I'm an habitual reader and am rarely completely won over by a book, but this book won me over from page one. I read "Wide Sargasso Sea" and "Tigers are Better Looking" some year's ago; I realised then that Rhys was a writer of great control and restraint; but I was not yet won over. But having read this book, I can only agree with the reviews I mention above. Why is this book not better recognised as the masterpiece that it is? Djl, I'm pleased that you, like me, are comparing this favourably against Hemingway. I'm a Hemingway fan, and this, Jean Rhys's best work, is better, in my opinion than any of Hemingway's novels. Very occasionally I have the privilege of reading books - the Alice books, the Pickwick Papers, Decline And Fall, If This Is A Man & The Truce, etc (off the top of my head) - which I know I will, for the rest of my life, be able to open at any page and read with pleasure and wonder. Of the great books written in English in the Twentieth Century, this - the story of a woman (!) who drinks more than might be healthy - is one of the best. Quiet and moving.

I completed this book on a flight from LA to NY on 10/11/2000. This was my first reading experience by Jean Rhys. I learned that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis included Jean Rhys on her roster of favorite authors. That's why I bought the book. I was curious to learn what 'tickled her fancy'. At first...the book was 3 stars...but after a day or two had passed I realized that the book had quite an impact on me. I had just finished an A+ book (The Notorious Dr. August)...so, maybe that's why I didn't give this 5 stars. It explores loneliness, living on the edge, dealing with death, depression, the cheeriness of childhood, and the search for love. So, you can imagine why Jacqueline Kennedy loved this author. I felt the main character, Julia, was easily identifiable by Jackie. Mr MacKenzie was her Onassis and Mr. Horsfield was her own Mr. Tempelsman in many ways. Although, I saw Julia as a sort of prostitute "in cognito" style. I did gasp when I read 'She's gone'. 'Gone'. That was the word. It struck me because my own sister-in-law called me with those exact words when my mother passed away. And when she wrote 'Nothing matters. Nothing can be worse than how I feel now, nothing.' I gasped again because in my eulogy to my mother I started it with those two words "Nothing matters"...as that was how I felt initially. Therefore, if you know anyone dealing with grief this book should help during some trying moments. Overall, the book leaves you slightly depressed at the end. It went full circle. There were some extraordinarily good lines in this book. One favorite: Every day is a new day. Every day you are a new person.

Rhys is best-known for "Wide Sargasso Sea," which is a wonderful book but the least important of her novels. I recommend picking up all four of Rhys' early novels but this is my personal favorite. Rhys is a brilliant writer who can say more in a sentence than many authors can say in a chapter--and she makes you feel more in a word than many authors achieve in a novel.

After Leaving Mr. MacKenzie (1930) repeats the effective Jean Rhys formula: a broken woman of uncertain age, shattered by hypersensitivity, alcoholism, emotional abuse, vague mental illness, and other 'pathological cruelties of everyday life,' bravely attempts to face another day, suffering self-hatred and self-recrimination with each step of the way. The novel begins with anti-heroine Julia Martin in the last stages of a romantic affair with pompous, thick - skinned blowhard Mr. MacKenzie. MacKenzie has provided Julia with financial support since the termination of their dalliance, but now declines to continue to do so. Financially and emotionally destitute, Julia leaves Paris and returns to London, where, "hoping to rest," she unexpectedly discovers her extended family gathered around their dying mother.

Like Jean Genet, Rhys wrote a series of novels about permanent social outsiders and outcasts, and, like Genet, Rhys had only one dark if very human vision to express. Other novelists such as Erskine Caldwell and Muriel Spark similarly wrote novels of extremely narrow focus (Caldwell's Tobacco Road, Spark's Not To Disturb and The Driver's Seat), but were also capable of more varied, optimistic, and expansive works. The antiheroes in Genet's novels find a means of empowering and centering themselves through narcissism, violence, dominance, sexual expression, or mysticism; but Rhys' nonplussed female protagonists are perpetually at square one, never the better for their defeated plans or self-sabotaged efforts. Sadly, Julia finds relief only in brief moments of spontaneous rage or cruelty.

Rhys had an acute talent for portraying women in and under such conditions, but it's undeniable that Rhys' vision of harrowing experience, rote abandonment, and human indifference was projected outward onto every facet of her fictional landscapes. The curtains and wallpaper are always faded, the rented rooms shabby, the maids surly, the proprietresses petty and suspicious, the food tasteless, the milk rancid, relatives disdainful. In fact, Rhys created an entire universe of human desolation in each of her five novels, one from which none of the characters, young or old, male or female, wealthy or without means, are exempted; some merely play the game better and have more resources. One of the most satisfying elements in After Leaving Mr. MacKenzie is Rhys' brutal, very focused examination of those sides of human nature which Western societies prefer to privately deny and publicly avoid.

All of Rhys' anti-heroines are socially disenfranchised, emotionally wounded, needy, gullible, and financially insecure; but they are simultaneously often ill tempered, manipulative, callous, arrogant, amoral, and almost entirely self - absorbed. Julia Martin is Rhys' most hard-bitten protagonist, having none of the wisdom or humor that Sasha Jansen has in fourth novel Good Morning, Midnight, nor the innocence of Rhys' early ingénues. Somnolent and easily wounded Julia is acutely sensitive but only occasionally empathetic to the reality of others, unless, in the moment, she sees herself reflected within them. Julia is also a listless parasite and psychic vampire who lives off the emotions, energy, and money of the men with whom she has casual affairs; except for brief periods of work and a failed marriage, this is how she has provided for herself as an adult. In one grim but revelatory scene, the willful Julia indifferently tells the man she is about to lose that she can get another meal ticket any time she wishes, as she always has in the past. Is she speaking out of defensiveness, or simply telling the truth about her power and experience? For Julia, moments of happiness, enthusiasm, or pleasure are fleeting and as far away as the stars.

Readers may wonder exactly what is wrong with Julia; the answer is: almost everything. Self - hatred and clinical depression primarily, but Julia is also anxious, passive-aggressive, lonely, financially destitute, lazy, narcissistic, morbidly introverted, co - dependent, anemic, and probably suffering from borderline personality disorder. Julia 'can't be alone and can't be too close.' She is also aware and proud of her outsider status; confronting decent younger sister Norah, Julia smugly considers herself the better of the two, the one who has brazenly spit in the face of social convention and middle class morality. Sociopathically, Julia never considers that her rebellion has brought about the almost nihilistic sense of failure and low self - esteem from which she painfully suffers. Rhys, while never less than convincing, hangs so many internal and external albatrosses around Julia's neck that her unhappy existence seems almost fatally determined. Today, Julia would be receiving a maintenance course of serotonin inhibitors.

Feminists took up the Rhys cudgel early; indeed, superficially, Rhys' novels and short stories seem tailor made for the feminist cause. But Rhys' novels are no more primarily about the plight of women than Genet's were about the plight of criminal homosexual men. Rhys cast a wide net in conceiving her fictional worlds; her truths are universal truths that, for better or worse, apply to all. Readers will certainly recognize a kernel of themselves in Rhys' ambivalent, envious, bitter, forlorn, and greedy cast.

After Leaving Mr. MacKenzie ends with Julia enjoying a second Pernod in a Parisian café as twilight falls, a time of day Rhys refers to as "the hour between dog and wolf." Since Julia's life can be said to exist only between these two polarities - between the potentially threatening and the actively harmful - the metaphor is apt. Julia, both a continuous victim and a manipulator, if not an outright abuser, herself, is a creature by nature between dog and wolf. Highly recommended to those who enjoy gripping psychological fiction.

Wow! I finished this book in the bathtub this evening, and was ready to sink under the water, yet of course rise again- which seems to be much of what rhys' anti-heroine julia does again & again in this marvelous book.

I agree with another reviewer who wrote that this book goes beyond the 'woman condition' into the broader range of humanties inability to connect with one another. But I would also place this book high on the list of important women's literature.

Although published in 1930, Julia's inability to function in the way society wants & expects us to- struck a resonanting chord in me. It isn't that she is rebelling; she just isn't functioning- and I admit to feeling stuck in that same, frightening place. (although I don't hit strange men up for money).

This book should be placed in the literary canon, and discussed along with the rest of the 'big boys of literature' about what it means to be lost & meandering.

Highly recommended!

Jean Rhys was a writer that I was not introduced to until very late in my college career as an english major, and after I finished this book I was surprised that this book isn't discussed more frequently as one of the classics of the modern tradition. An emotionally resonant book that shows more style, flare, and daring of imagination than any of the male writers that are considered to be the pillars of that era. The book lingers in the mind long after being finished, with incredibly keen descriptions of a Paris that is bleak, haunted, and filled with a cast of characters that are all the more repulsive for their absolutely sincere depiction. A small, dark gem of a book.

It is 1923, Julia Martin is 36 and past her prime. She has lived by her looks; kept by men. But now Mr. Mackenzie has left her. She has no money, no prospects. What will become of her? In spare prose that cuts as sharply as a laser, Jean Rhys brings to life the ghastly loneliness and hopelessness of Julia, and all those women like her who at a time when women had few opppportunities, lived by their looks, snaring husbands if they were lucky or just lovers who care for them for a time. Rhys says more in ten carefully placed words than most other writers do in ten pages. This short novel is a masterpiece of concision and stands beside Kate Chopin's, 'The Awakening' as a brilliantly perceptive look at the plight of women. Highly recommended.

Jean Rhys is best known for her amazing novel Wide Sargasso Sea. I can't even give a little hint at the theme of this novel because that will destroy much of the reading pleasure. (If you decide to read it, don't look at the back cover or any reviews, they will kill it for you. Just go to the text straightaway.) Unfortunately, many people don't pay as much attention to other novels by this great writer. After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (1930) is very different from but in no way inferior to Wide Sargasso Sea.

The best thing about the novel is the economy of words and emotions in the description of the main character's experiences. Julia Martin's tragedy is very mundane and ordinary. Her story is narrated in simple phrases, stripped of any kind of flourish. This type of narrative voice underscores just how bereft Julia's existence is and just how naked she feels in her confrontation with the world.

Julia Martin only knows one way to survive in a hostile universe. She enters into relationships with men who maintain her. When these men, such as Mr. Mackenzie, for example, get tired of her and dump her, Julia has no way of leaving the relationship with at least a shred of self-respect. Of course, what Julia does is prostitution. She wants, however, to preserve a semblance of respectability by pretending that there is some sort of an emotional connection between her and the men who pay her for sex. Soon, Julia starts to disintegrate, torn between the need to secure at least a modest sum of money to survive and the desire to maintain some last shred of dignity.

Even though the events in the novel take place between the two Great Wars, Julia's experiences still ring true today. This is what makes this novel so incredibly sad. Decades of women's liberation movement lie between us and Julia. But there are still so many Julias around.

While there are myriad reasons to admire this extraordinary work, I think the quality that stands out the most for me is the fluidity with which the author delves into all the characters' points of view ... while Julia is the nominal heroine of the book, the reader sees through nearly every character's lens, and the result is a kaleidoscope of perception and emotion. The brief section recounting Julia's catching butterflies as a child is one of the most truthful and disturbing things I have read in a long time.