After Leaving Mr. MacKenzie

It is 1923, Julia Martin is 36 and past her prime. She has lived by her looks; kept by men. But now Mr. Mackenzie has left her. She has no money, no prospects. What will become of her? In spare prose that cuts as sharply as a laser, Jean Rhys brings to life the ghastly loneliness and hopelessness of Julia, and all those women like her who at a time when women had few opppportunities, lived by their looks, snaring husbands if they were lucky or just lovers who care for them for a time. Rhys says more in ten carefully placed words than most other writers do in ten pages. This short novel is a masterpiece of concision and stands beside Kate Chopin's, 'The Awakening' as a brilliantly perceptive look at the plight of women. Highly recommended.

After Leaving Mr. MacKenzie (1930) repeats the effective Jean Rhys formula: a broken woman of uncertain age, shattered by hypersensitivity, alcoholism, emotional abuse, vague mental illness, and other 'pathological cruelties of everyday life,' bravely attempts to face another day, suffering self-hatred and self-recrimination with each step of the way. The novel begins with anti-heroine Julia Martin in the last stages of a romantic affair with pompous, thick - skinned blowhard Mr. MacKenzie. MacKenzie has provided Julia with financial support since the termination of their dalliance, but now declines to continue to do so. Financially and emotionally destitute, Julia leaves Paris and returns to London, where, "hoping to rest," she unexpectedly discovers her extended family gathered around their dying mother. Like Jean Genet, Rhys wrote a series of novels about permanent social outsiders and outcasts, and, like Genet, Rhys had only one dark if very human vision to express. Other novelists such as Erskine Caldwell and Muriel Spark similarly wrote novels of extremely narrow focus (Caldwell's Tobacco Road, Spark's Not To Disturb and The Driver's Seat), but were also capable of more varied, optimistic, and expansive works. The antiheroes in Genet's novels find a means of empowering and centering themselves through narcissism, violence, dominance, sexual expression, or mysticism; but Rhys' nonplussed female protagonists are perpetually at square one, never the better for their defeated plans or self-sabotaged efforts. Sadly, Julia finds relief only in brief moments of spontaneous rage or cruelty. Rhys had an acute talent for portraying women in and under such conditions, but it's undeniable that Rhys' vision of harrowing experience, rote abandonment, and human indifference was projected outward onto every facet of her fictional landscapes. The curtains and wallpaper are always faded, the rented rooms shabby, the maids surly, the proprietresses petty and suspicious, the food tasteless, the milk rancid, relatives disdainful. In fact, Rhys created an entire universe of human desolation in each of her five novels, one from which none of the characters, young or old, male or female, wealthy or without means, are exempted; some merely play the game better and have more resources. One of the most satisfying elements in After Leaving Mr. MacKenzie is Rhys' brutal, very focused examination of those sides of human nature which Western societies prefer to privately deny and publicly avoid. All of Rhys' anti-heroines are socially disenfranchised, emotionally wounded, needy, gullible, and financially insecure; but they are simultaneously often ill tempered, manipulative, callous, arrogant, amoral, and almost entirely self - absorbed. Julia Martin is Rhys' most hard-bitten protagonist, having none of the wisdom or humor that Sasha Jansen has in fourth novel Good Morning, Midnight, nor the innocence of Rhys' early ingénues. Somnolent and easily wounded Julia

Rhys is best-known for "Wide Sargasso Sea," which is a wonderful book but the least important of her novels. I recommend picking up all four of Rhys' early novels but this is my personal favorite. Rhys is a brilliant writer who can say more in a sentence than many authors can say in a chapter--and she makes you feel more in a word than many authors achieve in a novel.

"After Leaving Mr. MacKenzie" by Jean Rhys easily deserves to be amongst the top 100 english-language novels. In its compact construction, Rhys is able to offer a dense, dark, disturbing, yet beautiful picture of modern life and its limits -- particularly for those who are not "blessed" with wealth.To read this as a "women's novel" is to do it a great injustice. This is not a story about women, sexual opression, etc. To read it as such limits Rhys scope and genius. This is a story about the confining, declining nature of contemporary life, as well as a tale about the inability of humans to connect with each other.Great works of fiction are not "about" men's or women's issues --they are about humanity and what we've lost and gained. Rhys is amongst the best at holding a mirror.Rhys out Hemingways Hemingway -- she is brutal, conscise and clean, like a knife to the throat. She is truthful -- to the point of pain.Read & quo! t;Mr. Mackenzie" then jump to Rhys' "Good Morning, Midnight." The pair say all there is to say about life in this century.As someone who has read 50 of the so-called top 100 books, I would place Mackenzie in the top 5. Fitzgerald should have written this well! Gatsby can't hold a candle to Mackenzie.