I love a thin book because it's nice to read a book in one sitting. I found my Penguin copy second-hand in a local bookshop. Having enjoyed the Wide Sagasso Sea, I was curious about what else Jean Rhys would write. However, having just put After Leaving Mr Mackenzie down, I'm feeling a bit bleak. There no joy in this book. I didn't much like the protagonist, Julia Martin or care much what happened to her. I don't think Jean Rhys liked her much either or anyone else. All the characters appear to be locked into their particular conditions of need. Julia bares the consequences of her need no less than her sister Nora or indeed, the powerful but flawed males for whom Julia is a kind of catalyst for their weaknesses. Just as in Anna Karenina Tolstoy sees into the character's thoughts and shows how these thoughts differ from actual actions and speech, Jean Rhys's omniscience makes everyone seem almost helpless. Only Miss Wyatt appears to be able to exert some control.

In spite of the bleakness, Jean Rhys's succinct but caustic powers of observation can make you look away from the page in awe:

Nora herself was labelled for all the world to see. She was labelled 'Middle class, no money.'Hardly enough to keep herself in clean linen. And yet scrupulously, fiercely clean, but with all the daintiness and prettiness perforce cut out. Everything about her betrayed the woman who had been brought up to certain tastes, then left without the money to gratify them; trained to certain opinions which forbid her even the relief of rebellion against her lot; yet holding desperately to both her tastes and her opinions.

( )

She spoke as if she were trying to recall a book she had read or a story she had heard and Mr Horsfield felt irritated by her vagueness, 'because', he thought, 'your life is your life and you must be pretty definite about it. Or if it's a story you are making up, you ought at least to have it pat.'

A strange, lonely, forceful novel, entirely in line with Rhys' canon. Julia Martin, the novel's central character, is a sort of down-at-heel Lily Bart, the heroine from Wharton's The House of Mirth. A woman reliant on the charity of others, especially men, never quite strong enough to continue on her own but also uncertain if, or how, she could do so anyway. Flitting between a lonely London and a lonely Paris, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie is a study of those lost in the cracks of society, of the kind of cafard found in late 19th century naturalist paintings, and of the slow urban isolation felt, then, especially by women, and now, perhaps, by many more of us? ( )

Quietly devastating. ( )

A beautiful woman who is young can get men to take care of her. What happens to a beautiful woman when she loses her looks and self-confidence? Unless you're married, and/or have money, you can become desperate and depressed. You begin to think about what the rest of your life will be like. Will you find someone to love you? How will you go on finding money to stay in the horrid boarding houses? ( )

Not a likeable character, nor a really sympathetic one, but certainly believable and original. Rhys does cut to the bone, doesn't she? ( )