By a stroke of good fortune I followed my reading of Simenon's Little Restaurant story with Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight. One led perfectly into the other. Funnily enough, when I'd read the opening pages of Rhys's novel back in December I'd found it more than a little opaque in terms of the fractured consciousness of its narrator. This time round it seemed so easy to read I really wondered how I'd felt so blocked initially.
The extraordinary thing about Rhys is the complete artistic control she possesses when dealing with material about the most extreme states. Good Morning, Midnight lacks the ambition and range of Wide Sargasso Sea but, my goodness, it lacks nothing of the sheer power of Rhys's final novel and, just possibly, its sly humour gives it a dimension that WSS for all its dazzling brilliance falls short of.
I'm still not sure of the ending of Midnight, though. I can think of at least three interpretations, but they contradict each other. Not that that's a bad thing - especially if it invites a rereading.
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