After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (Norton Paperback Fiction) (Paperback)

by Jean Rhys (Author) "AFTER SHE had parted from Mr Mackenzie, Julia Martin went to live in a cheap hotel on the Quai des Grands Augustins..." (more)
Key Phrases: Uncle Griffiths, Miss Wyatt, Monsieur Albert (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
An artistic success. (Chicago Tribune )

Julia Martin wants more than the usual woman's lot, but the only thing she knows how to do is please men. When she was young, it was easy to find glamour and adventure in affairs with respectable married men. Always willing to be cunning enough to start an affair with the kind of man she could wangle a living out of, she was never willing - or able - to make all the compromises necessary to keep an affair going. Now living in a dingy hotel, alienated by her past from family and friends, she faces a lonely and wanting middle-age. Her affair with Mr. McKenzie is over, the last in a string of affairs with men whose respect she cannot earn and whose money she desperately needs; there are no likely new prospects. The last time Julia meets Mr. McKenzie, she is angrily proud: "'Oh, yes, look here, this check... This check I got today. I don't want it.' 'Good,' said Mr. McKenzie. 'Just as you like, of course.' She picked up her glove and hit his cheek with it. 'I despise you,' she said. 'Quite,' said Mr. McKenzie." After Leaving Mr. McKenzie is an intense and penetrating picture of the sinking of a woman who only wanted to live a little. Rebecca West called it "Terrible and superb." Which indeed, it is. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Jesse Larsen

Product Description
Now leaving her last lover, a once-beautiful woman is running out of luck and chances. A visit to London to see her ailing mother and distrustful sister brings her stark life into full focus. A masterful and terrifying tale from one of the truest voices in 20th-century fiction.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (March 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393315479
• ISBN-13: 978-0393315479
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #79,932 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An overlooked classic -- still misunderstood, August 7, 1998

By	[e-mail] - See all my reviews

"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 as a "women's novel" is to do it a great injustice. This is not a story about women, sexual opression, 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, conscise and clean, like a knife to the throat. She is truthful -- to the point of pain.

Read &quo! t;Mr. Mackenzie" then jump to Rhys' "Good Morning, Midnight." The pair say all there is to say about life in this century.

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.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully concise, February 8, 2004

By	lady detective "sakura kitty" (east coat) - See all my reviews

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!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My first Amazon.com review, November 19, 2004

By	Peter - See all my reviews

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.