Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys

 

Summary (from the publisher): 'It was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known,' says Anna, eighteen years old and catapulted to England from the West Indies after the death of her beloved father. Working as a chorus girl, Anna drifts into the demimonde of Edwardian London. But there, dismayed by the unfamiliar cold and greyness, she is absolutely alone and unconsciously floating from innocence to harsh experience.

Review: This is apparently a highly autobiographical novel that follows a young girl named Anna who has been brought from her home in the West Indies to England after the death of her father. Left destitute and largely alone, Anna first finds work as a chorus girl in London, before floating into a harsher existence. 

Many years ago, I read Wide Sargasso Sea by this author. This one felt very different in many ways, but both have similar themes: race, problematic relationships with men, young women taken advantage etc. Although she really never addresses her own feelings and emotions, as you read, it becomes rapidly clear that Anna is in great distress. She is grieving her father, alone, and isolated. She doesn't like the gray and dreary world of England and seems adrift and hapless with nowhere to turn and no one willing to help her, other than friends who offer her lodging at times. 

This book really explores exploitation within relationships and how gifts of money impact the relationship. Anna is reliant on men she meets to help support her financially, but who is really using who? 

I really struggled with this one. While I emphasized with Anna in her isolation, I never connected to any of the characters. This is written in a very hallucinatory and fragmented way that at times it was difficult to follow, which I think is meant to mimic the collapse of Anna's mental health. 

Just a note that this book does use the N word, in reference to her West Indies upbringing. 

Favorite quotes: 

"Sometimes it was as if I were back there and as if England were a dream. At other times England was the real thing and out there was the dream, but I could never fit them together."

"Money ought to be everybody's. It ought to be like water."

"The thing with men is to get everything you can out of them and not care a damn."

"Take care of yourself and if you can't be good be careful."

"It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water."

Stars: 3