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Quartet Jean Rhys 9780060805685 Books

Download As PDF : Quartet Jean Rhys 9780060805685 Books

Quartet Jean Rhys 9780060805685 Books

The ex-pat community of 1920s Paris is known for being a home to many literary giants of the 20th century, but this book is a grim, realistic look at how the other half lived. The British Marya, a sometimes chorus girl, has been living in Paris with her con-man, Polish husband for a while. But when his racket is discovered, he is sentenced to jail leaving Mayra to basically fend for herself with scarcely a franc to her name.

Fortuitously, or not, she meets an English couple who invite her stay in a small room in their apartment. Her life consists of endless outings to cafes, seedy bars, restaurants, and great deal of drinking. More significantly, she is virtually forced to become entangled in their rather antagonistic psychological games. The wife encourages Marya to take up with her husband and then makes life uncomfortable when she does. Eventually her husband’s release from prison has to be filtered into this distressing situation.

The book is basically a brief and bleak look at the miserableness of dead-end lives and the vulnerability, especially of women, of those with no resources to get their heads above water. The end for such people usually is not good. The atmospherics of the book are unrelenting in capturing the entire situation.


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Quartet Jean Rhys 9780060805685 Books Reviews

This is Jean Rhys' first novel (1928), not as strong a book as Good Morning, Midnight (1970, p. 131) but firmer in narrative design than Voyage in the Dark, recalling The Good Solder by Ford Madox Ford, but from a feminine perspective, a woman, Marya Zelli (nee Hughes), who gradually comes to see herself as a prostitute having become separated from her genteel poor English roots, to become the wife of a Polish fence for burglars in France. When her husband is imprisoned, like Blance DuBois from "A streetcar named desire" she comes to depend on the kindness of strangers, which results in sexual submission that she tries to mask as love.

Marya is a pathetic character but even if her heroine, always the same haphazard young woman at the loose end of life, is a little younger and to begin with more hopeful, there are other points of similar recognition Paris, "The unvarying background. Knowing waiters, clouds of smoke, the smell of drink." -- where she becomes an alcoholic who is also dependant of sleeping pills. She is taken in as a protegee by an English couple, the Heidlers, and quickly becomes a love object for H.J., a hate object for his wife, and the easy victim of both. The story has its own febrile fascination and once again Miss Rhys' dragonfly perceptions skim familiar surfaces (fear, loneliness, abandonment) with a momentary insistence and involvement.
My first Jean Rhys' book was Wide Sargasso Sea (Norton Critical Editions), set in the Caribbean and ending in England. I was duly impressed. Therefore, even though the ground has already been fairly well-plowed, that is, expatriates in Paris in the `20's, I decided to try another of her works, also, supposedly, largely autobiographical.

Marya Zelli, a young Englishwoman, of a "chorus line" background is doing her own version of "down and out" in Paris when she decides that a marriage to a Polish émigré might be both prudent and useful, though passionless. He is a "wheeler-dealer" sort; she refuses to ask the relevant questions, which are answered for her when he is carted off to jail. Again, without resources, she is an easy "mark" for an established English couple, he of licentious inclinations (quelle surprise?), but what is a bit surprising is the facilitating attitude of his wife. And Marya finds herself a pawn in their game.

The novel is tightly written, fast-paced, with the twists and turns of a mystery novel. As an example of Rhys' prose, consider this description of a room in the Hotel du Bosphore which looked down on Montparnasse station "An atmosphere of departed and ephemeral loves hung about the bedroom like stale scent, for the hotel was one of unlimited hospitality...the wallpaper was vaguely erotic-huge and fantastically shaped mauve, green and yellow flowers sprawling on a black ground...It was impossible, when one looked at that bed, not to think of the succession of petites femmes who had extended themselves upon it, clad in carefully thought out pink or mauve chemises, full of tact and savoir faire and savoir vivre and all the rest of it."

When Zelli's husband finishes his term in prison, and returns to his wife, the novel's pace quickens to its somewhat surprising climax. Sure, maybe it was just me, but the bleak lives of these dysfunctional people, without any redeeming graces, eventually grated enough that I was glad the short novel was finally over. Not for the fun-read, or inspirational crowd. 4-stars.
A charming, semi-sweet love story from the heart of a very young and gifted Jean Rhys. Bookend this with "Wide Sargasso Sea."
I love all her novels despite their grimness. Most, not all, are set in Paris in another era, but the writing is so original and modern that the time could be today, the Paris I know is still recognizable.
Powerful but extremely slow story!!! It grew extremely boring at a certain point and only grew exciting toward the ending.
The ex-pat community of 1920s Paris is known for being a home to many literary giants of the 20th century, but this book is a grim, realistic look at how the other half lived. The British Marya, a sometimes chorus girl, has been living in Paris with her con-man, Polish husband for a while. But when his racket is discovered, he is sentenced to jail leaving Mayra to basically fend for herself with scarcely a franc to her name.

Fortuitously, or not, she meets an English couple who invite her stay in a small room in their apartment. Her life consists of endless outings to cafes, seedy bars, restaurants, and great deal of drinking. More significantly, she is virtually forced to become entangled in their rather antagonistic psychological games. The wife encourages Marya to take up with her husband and then makes life uncomfortable when she does. Eventually her husband’s release from prison has to be filtered into this distressing situation.

The book is basically a brief and bleak look at the miserableness of dead-end lives and the vulnerability, especially of women, of those with no resources to get their heads above water. The end for such people usually is not good. The atmospherics of the book are unrelenting in capturing the entire situation.