'Voyage in the Dark' is the tale of Anna Morgan's passive decent into self destruction; lost in the bleak wilderness of an unfamiliar England and used by those sought for affection. Her heart stays rooted in her West Indian upbringing and the memory of servant, Francine, the only person with whom she seems to have ever felt close to.
'There was a lark rising jerkily, as if it went by clockwork, as if someone were winding it up and stopping every now and again.'� Rhys evokes poetic beauty from lonely observations which mirror perfectly the state of Anna's mind and body. She is often helped to get a footing throughout the novel; but when given up on she barely tries to climb alone.
The real soul of 'Voyage in the Dark' lies within not the story itself (which often jumps quickly and confusingly), but Rhys' wonderful use of language in the expression of Anna's grim emotional state, for example when she thinks about the overwhelming desire to sleep 'when you can hear time sliding past you, like water running'�. Unlike Maeve Brennan's 'The Visitor', Rhys effectively explores the mind of a girl that is emotionally lost. Brennan may play around with 'voice', but she evokes little in terms of beauty or empathy for the lead protagonist. Anna Morgan is so pitifully self-destructive, so helpless to her own confusion, but within that is a beauty'� a gentle melancholy that holds, irrelevant of time or place.

It is hard not to enjoy 'Voyage in the Dark'. Anna's journey, albeit a depressing one, is insightful, poetic, and frequently funny. Rhys has found in herself a very interesting character; wildly irrational with loveable eccentricity, and despite her almost terminable misery, you know Anna, like Rhys, has the intellectual capacity to pull herself above all the 'sneering'� fools she finds herself among, if only she had the will.

Want to comment on this Book Reviews? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Book Reviews and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...