The bed was soft the pillow was as cold as ice. I sat down on the bed and listened, then I lay down.

She longs to start all over again with Walter and for everything to be better next time. It’s as if she is looking down on herself, her mind disconnected from her body in some way. In a very subtle scene, Rhys explores the rush of thoughts running through Anna’s mind as Walter tries to kiss her. At first she rejects Walter’ advances, pushing him away as forcefully as possible. Walter is quite taken with Anna, and when the girls’ tour winds up in the capital, he invites Anna to dinner at a hotel in Hanover Square.Īnna is young, vulnerable and inexperienced in love. One afternoon when Anna and Maudie are out for a walk they meet two men, one of whom is Walter Jeffries, a relatively wealthy man who lives and works in London. When we first meet Anna, she is working as a chorus girl in a show, sharing a room with fellow showgirl, Maudie, as their tour moves from one seaside town to another. Set largely in London in 1913-14, Voyage is narrated by an eighteen- year-old girl, Anna Morgan, brought to England from her former home in the West Indies by her stepmother, Hester, a selfish woman who all but abandons Anna to survive on her own following her father’s death. A masterpiece in miniature – a brilliant, painful, devastating book that leaves it mark upon the reader. If anything, I think Voyage is even better than its predecessor. Rhys’ second novel, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie(1931), was a favourite of mine in 2015, so it seemed right to choose her next book, Voyage, as a follow-on read. Back in December, when I put together my reading list for the Classics Club, one of the first books I selected was Jean Rhys’ Voyage in the Dark (first published in 1934).

Voyage in the dark