“How on earth can you say why you love people? You might as well say you know where the lighting is going to strike. At least that’s how it has always seemed to me.”

For a long time, I thought of “Wide Sargasso Sea” only when hearing the name Jean Rhys, but the synopsis wasn’t as intriguing to me. Instead, I browsed through my favourite second hand website and filtered thousands of books. My eyes landed on this short book - an author I’ve already heard great things about, intriguing title.

“Good Morning, Midnight” is interesting in itself. An Oxymoron for the sake of catching the reader’s attention? Total opposites to raise questions in people’s minds?

“Good Morning, Midnight” focuses on a young woman’s experiences in the middle of Paris, fighting loneliness in a city she fled to in order to escape personal tragedies. While searching for self-determination and independence, she encounters cheap hotel rooms, all looking the same but each more depressing than the one prior, and men of whom she expects nothing and, least of all, understanding and kindness.

Jean Rhys’s prose is much more than just beautiful and deserves, even demands, to be read. It is quite funny how we can see ourselves in a literary character in the 30s. Running away from our problems, even moving countries, dying our hair blonde on a random Thursday evening just because we felt like it, running from one café to another to kill time.

The writing was very stream-of-consciousness, perfectly fitting the character and my own mind. There was no direct plot to follow, only this very messed up female protagonist. I devoured every single page, and just like our main character, I expected nothing and just went with the flow.