Customer Reviews

Voyage In the Dark (Penguin Twentieth-Century Clas)

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this is my favourite book of all time. i came across it accidentally in Croydon library when I was 20 years old, i loved it then, and i love it now, 20 years later. i read other works of hers (and I think she is an amazing writer) and her biography (by Carole Angier - also utterly brilliant and very highly recommended) - but Voyage in the Dark is still my favourite.

Why this is is hard to say. There is something about the prose style - concise, clear but dreamlike. The subject matter - a woman alone in the world written with a pitiless observation. The themes, loss of innocence, the struggle for survival, the loss of love - all beautifully written.

Carole Angier analyses all this far better than I ever could - if you love literature the chances are (man or woman) you will love this work. I do recommend it, and others works by Rhys, and her definitive biography by Carole Angiers.

A stern warning to my teenage son: Stay clear of wistful waifs who exude sexy depression and masochistic neediness, especially if they seem to be talented with words; you won't like yourself in the novel they write about you.

Certainly Ford Madox Ford, a great unhappy writer on his own hook, would second that advice after reading the portrayal of his relationship with Jean Rhys in her second novel, Quartet. Rhys's first four novels - Voyage in the Dark, Quartet, After Leaving Mr. Mackensie, and Good Morning Midnight - are all essentially chapters in her self-excoriating semi-autobiography, the agonizing tale of her life-spiral into degradation and suicidal depression. As a pretty-but-not-beautiful young white girl from the Afro-Caribbean island of Dominica, our heroine takes one step toward shaping her life by de-exiling herself to England. From that step on, it's all adrift, from sexual exploitation (two-way) to exploitation, grimmer and grimier with each episode. She's a sad, sick kitty, this self-hating waif. She also writes with a poignant, painful realism that was way ahead of her time (the 1920s in London and Paris) in terms of confessional literature. There's something in almost every chapter of Rhy's fictionalized desolation that makes me want to run a few miles in the hills, take a cold shower, and listen to a Bach cantata to revitalize myself. There's also something so honest in her that I come back for more desperation on the page.

That's not what I expected when I bought the complete novels. I'd just spent two weeks in Dominica, hiking, snorkling, bird-watching on that beautiful volcanic cone of an island, where equal parts are blended of pitiful colonial detritus and indomitable Black joyousness. I'd never read a word of Rhys, but I noticed a shabby house with her name on a plaque in Roseau, the mildewed rubble-heap that passes for a port city. I expected something on the order of Jamaica Kincaid, or even better, the early hilarious novels of VS Naipaul. Ooo-wee, was I on the wrong track!

I seldom urge people to read depressing novels or down-hearted poems. The world has a way of supplying each of us as much despair as we need. Rhys is an exception. Her sorrow is so pure than it exonerates her degraded life. I haven't read her last novel yet - Wide Sargasso Sea, written 30 years later and considered her masterpiece - but I will. If ever a life required a redemption, it was Jean Rhys's.

This is an enjoyable, if short, early novel by the once forgotten British writer, Jean Rhys, who’s celebrated, Wide Sargasso Sea, contains the same inspiration that of her upbringing in the Caribbean.

Essentially autobiographical, she tells the story of Anna Morgan, a 19 year old girl, recently arrived in London from Dominica (Rhys was born and raised on the small Caribbean island of Dominica). Evoking a penurious existence of cold London bed sits, surrounded by bleak fog and bad food. (Unsurprising as Dominica is famed for its lush habitat, “The Nature Island of the Caribbean”).

She relates the people that Anna encounters who invariably are sexually predatory men, selfish and jealous women and cold hearted relatives. But Anna is also a callow youth, cold towards everyone she meets and so I couldn’t relate to her, but mainly as she acted impulsively and without reason.

However, this novel was ahead of its time in describing the alienation of a newly arrived emigrant and also the situation and plight of women when sick or unemployed. In the absence of a social welfare system, Rhys portrays the women who relied on finding a man to look after them, and also the men who used them for their ends.

Apart form this I personally wouldn’t buy this book on its own despite it having some insights into the world of London and a woman’s place in it at a certain time period. I don’t think it’s a fully appreciated work unless read together with those of her other earlier novels, perhaps as part of a collected works series.

Amazing. Haunting. An unremarkable character, an unremarkably typical story of the period, but an exceptionally well written novel. Rhys, I think, leaves more unsaid than said, which might leave some readers unsatisfied -- but if you are willing to fill in the blanks and open yourself to Anna Morgan's silent, dreary personality, then definitely give this book a chance.

Eighteen year old Anna is sent to England from a life in Dominica after her father dies. She becomes a chorus girl, then a "kept" woman. Her life is extremely dreary, as Anna is neither valued as a woman in these times, nor does she seem able to care about herself . The characters are all as cold and grey as the setting. The author was reported to be, in later life, an alcoholic and suicidal; from the overwhelming sense of depression oozing from these pages, I would guess that she was depressed all of her adult life (and treating and exacerbating it with alcohol).
I loved the story as a period piece, I enjoyed it for it's honesty and the fact that it was ahead of it's time, and I liked the simplicity and flow of the writing, but I guess I needed some little tiny tidbit of redemption or hint of joy somewhere, from someone. I've enjoyed many dark tales, but in this particular dark, depressing, hopeless sort of depiction of people, it felt like there was nowhere to turn for kind human connection (which is exactly what untreated depression feels like). Sadly, Ms. Rhys could probably have been successfully treated in this day and age.

They have bad communication and I never received my product. I actually paid extra for it to be shipped quickly. when I emailed them, they said they will refund my money, but they never did,

Voyage in The Dark was the first Jean Rhys book that I read, and it got me hopelessly addicted. Her voice is honest and compassionate, and truly gives youa bond with the protagonist. It is a book that I have not stopped talking about since I read it.

It could be because I'm male, but I didn't really get into this book. The writing was good but not so incredibly poetic as to interest me on its own. And the characters were uninspiring. I know that it's more realistic to have characters that cannot overcome their problems because most people in real life are like that as well, but I have a hard time dealing with those people so I certainly have little sympathy for a fictional character that is weak and pathetic. I've been told by others that have read this book that I missed the point, and if that's the case I don't mind being educated in my misperceptions but as it stands I can't really recommend this book. However I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading it either.

jean rhys is so brilliant. amazing. read it