After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie by Jean Rhys (1931)

A young woman down and out in Paris and London lives through the aftermath of a troubled love affair.

Book Review: After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie is a straightforward title for this description of life after lost love, left with a "sore and cringing feeling." Between 1928 and 1939 Jean Rhys (1890-1979) wrote four novels of young women adrift in the modern world. Then the novels stopped and she disappeared until 27 years later when she became famous for writing Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), a novel informed by having been born in Dominica and living as an exile for long periods in England. Mr. Mackenzie is the second of the four early novels. The young woman adrift in the modern world in this instance, an aging soiled dove, is Julia Martin, an Englishwoman living in Paris. We've met Julia before: she's Lorelei Lee, she's Irmgard Keun's "artificial silk girl," she's Blanche DuBois, she's Komako in Snow Country, she's Holly Golightly; she's a woman who lives on the generosity and guilt of men. But they're all different, they're each their own person in their own way. Here Julia is determined to stand up to the world even as she depends on the exchange of favors to survive. She won't knuckle under, she won't be dominated, even as she's tentative and dependent in an overwhelming world. She will keep her pride even if she has to cut off her nose to spite her face. "I don't look so bad, do I? I've still got something to fight the world with, haven't I?" In spiraling down, she's lost herself and lost her way, even when she knows "that she was doing a very foolish thing indeed." Self-destructive is the phrase. Julia doesn't know that beyond the sex she has little to offer, or little that she's willing to offer. Although she enjoys reading we don't learn what she reads. She's just a tough little nut who refuses to crack. But so troubled that she often fails to communicate except to relate a litany of complaint. She fails to respond, falls silent, almost catatonic at times, seems barely in touch with reality, answering in non sequitur. She's become so wrapped in her own misery she can no longer connect. She is not witty or charming as her looks fade. She has no friends, no relatives willing to help, little that makes her worthwhile, but she arouses our feelings nonetheless. We root for her for no reason than that she's a bit of green life growing through the pavement: "Her sordid wish to somehow keep alive." Although always seeking hand-outs from men, what she really wants "is that he would say something or look something that would make her feel less lonely." She's pitiful, she's human, left living in "the hour between dog and wolf." Apparently, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie forms a sort of semi-autobiographical trilogy, following Quartet (a/k/a Postures) (1928) and preceding Good Morning, Midnight (1939). Written with brevity and point this is a wonderful character study of someone with little to offer, but who immersed in emotion tenaciously clings to life and herself.  [4★]