VOYAGE IN THE DARK by Jean...

VOYAGE IN THE DARK by Jean Rhys (Norton: $6.95; 188 pp.). This acclaimed novel follows the efflorescence and decline of Anna Morgan, a young woman on the brink of adulthood. An emigrant from the West Indies adrift in Great Britain, Anna becomes a dancer in minor revues. Briefly taken up by a wealthy man, she is unable to accept his failure to return her devotion. In bleak, spare prose, Rhys captures the loneliness of a woman who has given everything she had and been spurned: Anna’s tragedy is not a fantasy of sorrowful passion, but a realistic succession of slow hours that must be filled with the meaningless activities of daily life.