Good Morning, Midnight

Jean Rhys · 1890–1979 · United Kingdom / Dominica

Why it matters

An aging, impoverished Englishwoman drifts through 1930s Paris hotels and cafés, drinking to hold off despair. Rhys's interwar novels of female precarity anticipated Wide Sargasso Sea's themes by decades, largely unread until her late rediscovery.

At a glance

Fragmented stream-of-consciousness drifting between present despair and unreliable memory.