Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Good Morning, Midnight, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Sadness and Vulnerability
Identity and Belonging
Memory, Loss, and Change
Money and Manipulation
Summary
Analysis
Sasha’s room in Paris reminds her of the past. It has been five days since she returned to the city, and in that time she has established a daily routine that brings her comfort—except, that is, when something unexpectedly upsets her. Last night, for instance, she was drinking at a bar and fell into conversation with the couple sitting next to her, and though her conversation with the beautiful young woman and her American boyfriend was perfectly pleasant, she suddenly broke into tears.
The beginning of Good Morning, Midnight establishes Sasha’s emotional vulnerability. The fact that her room in Paris reminds her of the past suggests that she’s haunted by certain memories—memories she hopes to block out by staying busy. For Sasha, sticking to a predictable routine is a way of avoiding sadness. And yet, she seems incapable of fully escaping her sorrow, considering that it rears its head so unexpectedly when she’s in the middle of a nice conversation. It’s not yet clear why she’s sad, then, but it is clear that she can’t just ignore her emotions by distracting herself.
Themes
The beautiful young woman tried to comfort Sasha by saying that she, too, gets sad sometimes, though she usually tries not to cry in public settings. Sasha, for her part, claimed she was just crying because she happened to have remembered something from her past, and then she removed herself to weep in the bathroom, where she stared at herself in the mirror.
Although Sasha doesn’t articulate exactly what set her off, she suggests that her memories are powerful enough to completely destabilize her in even the most unexpected circumstances. Given that she started crying while talking to a young couple, it’s possible that they reminded her of something from her own romantic past, perhaps suggesting that she’s nostalgic about a previous relationship.
Themes
Looking at herself in the mirror, Sasha asked herself why she was crying. She felt pretty good before breaking down. She’d had a few drinks and was even able to recognize that she’s actually quite lucky—after all, she’d recently emerged from the depths of sorrow, but nobody would ever be able to tell such a thing by just looking at her. At the same time, though, she knew that certain kinds of sorrow always stay tucked inside a person.
Sasha is caught off guard by her own sadness. It’s not that something specific overwhelmed her in this moment—rather, a general sense of sorrow seems to have descended on her, which is why it doesn’t matter that she was having a pleasant time. Nothing she can do, she realizes, will protect her from these surges of feeling, meaning that she’s completely vulnerable to her own emotions. She has undergone a terrible bout of depression and, as a result, will always feel a certain level of sorrow.
Themes
These days, Sasha is a bit of a machine, always trying to avoid thinking about the past. Nonetheless, she sits in her hotel room and reflects on her return to Paris. She was previously living in London and drinking heavily, but then her friend lent her money and encouraged her to leave, saying that she couldn’t bear to see Sasha in such a sorrowful state. According to this friend, Sasha needed a change, so she went to Paris with borrowed money. Now she sits in her hotel room and has trouble sleeping—despite the luminal she takes to calm her nerves.
Sasha’s friend wanted to cheer her up, but simply giving her money to go to Paris doesn’t do very much to make her happy. After all, changing scenery isn’t a surefire way to improve a person’s mood. In fact, it doesn’t really seem like anything has changed in Sasha’s life, since she wallows in her emotions just like she did in London, staying in her room and taking strong sleeping drugs. To make matters worse, she clearly associates Paris with many sad memories, so her return to the city is unlikely to do anything but exacerbate her discontent.
Themes
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Lying awake, Sasha turns on the light. She thinks there are bugs crawling up and down the wall, but when she looks closer, she realizes they’re just little black specks of dirt. Hoping to ease into sleep, she takes luminal and turns out the light, falling into a nightmare in which she’s in a London train station and has no choice but to follow signs that say: “This Way to the Exhibition.” At one point, a short man in a white nightgown screams, “Murder, murder, murder,” as blood pours from a wound in his face.
Sasha leads a very bleak existence in her dark hotel room. In fact, there’s not much separation between her waking life and her bad dreams, since there’s a certain nightmarish quality to her consciousness. One moment, she’s awake and staring at the wall with intense paranoia; the next, she’s asleep and dreaming of a wounded man screaming “murder.” Needless to say, there’s nothing uplifting about her state of mind, regardless of whether she’s awake or asleep.
Themes
When Sasha wakes in the morning, she can hear the man in the next room fumbling around. She often encounters him in the hall, and he’s always wearing a either a white or blue nightgown. He greets her every time they pass, but she doesn’t like him and has trouble envisioning him in regular clothes, viewing him as a ghost of the hotel.
The fact that the man living next to Sasha wears a nightgown further blurs the line between her waking life and the world of her dreams, since she just woke up from a nightmare in which a man in a nightgown screamed “murder” and bled from his face. More than anything, this strange overlap suggests that Sasha is drifting through her own life and is hardly able to distinguish her bleak existence from her bad dreams, creating a surreal and emotionally muddled feeling in the novel.
Themes
On her way out of the hotel that morning, the receptionist informs Sasha that he needs to take a look at her passport for the hotel’s records. Embarrassed that she’s British, she wishes she had taken on her husband’s nationality. But she knows that everything about her makes it clear that she’s British—her hat and coat, for example, both make it quite obvious where she’s from.
Sasha’s discomfort surrounding her nationality indicates that she’s not particularly comfortable with her own identity. What’s more, her idea that the receptionist probably already knows her nationality suggests that she feels exposed, as if she has no control over the way other people perceive her—which is, to a certain extent, true.
Themes
Instead of dwelling on how other people perceive her, Sasha leaves the hotel and focuses on trying to stay in good spirits. This means sticking to her schedule for the day, which is the best way to fight off sorrow: she can’t leave anything to chance and has to be very careful about getting too excited. If she lets her guard down, everything could go to ruin, so she has to make sure she doesn’t drink too much or visit certain places in the city—places with sad memories attached to them.
In some respects, Sasha’s attempt to focus on her daily activities instead of obsessing over how people like the hotel receptionist view her could be read as positive, since it means investing herself in the present rather than dwelling on the past. However, Sasha clings tightly to her daily routine as a way of ignoring deep emotions. Therefore, her engagement with the present is little more than a defense mechanism that helps her repress troubling memories—memories that will undoubtedly creep up to haunt her at some point (as evidenced by her unexpected crying jag while talking to a young couple in a bar).
Themes
The next night, Sasha admires Paris while walking home from a movie. She addresses the city directly, saying that, although it looks so gorgeous, it can also be cruel and nasty. All the same, it didn’t end up killing her last time, though she thought it might. And as she thinks this way, she suddenly finds herself rehashing a memory of standing on this very street corner with Enno and watching a famous writer’s funeral go by. As she walks, she thinks about all the things she and Enno used to do together in Paris, hearing an old, nostalgic song play on a loop in her head. Its lyrics go, “Here this happened, here that happened…”
It doesn’t take long before Sasha starts thinking about the past, even though she has made such an effort to invest herself in the present. Her inability to keep memories about Enno—a past lover—at bay illustrates why coming to Paris probably wasn’t such a good idea. The city itself is wrapped up in her memories, meaning that she can hardly go anywhere without thinking about what she and Enno used to do in those very places.
Themes
Sasha remembers working at a dress shop when she last lived in Paris. Her job was to stand at the front of the shop and greet customers, directing them to the appropriate saleswoman. One day, the store’s owner—a British man named Mr. Blank—came to check in on his business. Sasha was overwhelmed when he spoke to her, nervously answering his questions and feeling as if she’d failed to impress him, especially because he thought for some reason that she spoke three languages (English, French, and German), when in reality she only spoke English and French. Mr. Blank seemed to disapprove when it became clear that she wasn’t as worldly as he thought.
Sasha’s interaction with Mr. Blank spotlights her insecurity, as she worries about the kind of person he thinks she is. Because she works in a fancy dress shop, she feels a certain pressure to be refined, cultured, and worldly. When it becomes clear that she doesn’t speak three languages, then, she feels embarrassed and inadequate. On another note, the mere fact that Sasha spends time thinking about this memory illustrates that she’s incapable of stopping herself from delving into the past.
Themes
Later in the day, Mr. Blank called Sasha into his office and asked her to bring a letter to the “kise.” She eagerly took the letter and left the room, but then she didn’t know what to do; she had no idea what a “kise” was. She went around the entire building, asking her coworkers for help before returning to Mr. Blank and admitting she couldn’t find the person he wanted to send the letter to. Mr. Blank was astonished that she didn’t know how to find the cashier—la caisse in French. He berated her for being stupid, causing her to cry and run to the fitting rooms.
In this scene, Sasha wants to please Mr. Blank so badly that she fails to stand up for herself. The only reason she’s unable to deliver his letter is because he has a terrible French accent and mispronounces the French word for “cashier.” Instead of asking him to speak more clearly, though, she immediately takes the letter, and when he later calls her stupid, she keeps herself from noting that he’s the one who made an error. Her hesitancy to stand her ground spotlights her overall insecurity, indicating that she’s terrified of failing to live up to other people’s expectations.
Themes
After crying, Sasha returned to Mr. Blank’s office and asked to go home because she wasn’t feeling well. She wanted to yell at him for acting like he had the right to diminish her. He might have the right to pay her a meager wage and demand work out of her, but he didn’t have the right to belittle her. Instead, though, she just asked to go home, and he dismissively waved her off. And that was the end of Sasha’s job at the dress shop. She has had other odd jobs, but none that lasted long.
Again, Sasha’s insecurity keeps her from standing up for herself. She clearly recognizes that Mr. Blank has treated her unfairly, but she can’t bring herself to point this out. There is also an imbalanced power dynamic at play here, which could be exacerbated by the fact that Sasha is a woman and Mr. Blank is a man. Mr. Blank treats her like a small child instead of like a professional.
Themes
Still walking back from the movies, Sasha feels lonely. The houses she passes just make her feel even more alone. If she had lots of money and friends, these houses would seem normal and inviting. Because she’s on her own, though, they seem unwelcoming and depressing. When she gets back to the hotel, she sees shoes outside the door of the man in the nightgown—they look like the shoes of a traveling salesman, leading Sasha to wonder what her neighbor would look like as a salesperson going about in regular, everyday clothes.
Sasha feels as if loneliness and a lack of financial stability are defining features of her life. If she just had some money and some friends, she thinks, she’d have an entirely different experience in life. Even the way she looks at houses would change, perhaps because the houses wouldn’t seem so unattainable to her—as it stands, though, Sasha most likely feels as if these houses belong to rich people with big, loving families. She, on the other hand, is living on borrowed money and doesn’t have many people to keep her company in Paris, so the surrounding world seems cruel and even a bit threatening, emphasizing her loneliness.
Themes
Back at the hotel, Sasha looks out the window and watches a woman in the building across the street doing her makeup. They make eye contact for a moment, and then Sasha realizes that if she watches this woman, the woman might watch her, so she looks away. Later, a knock sounds on the door—it’s the man in the nightgown. He hovers there with a dopey smile, and when Sasha asks what he wants, he says, “Nothing.” Annoyed and a little creeped out, Sasha pushes him backwards and closes the door.
Although she spends her time thinking about how other people present themselves to the world, Sasha worries that other people will think about her in the same way. She doesn’t look away from the woman in the window to give this stranger privacy, but because she’s afraid about the stranger turning the same scrutiny on her as an act of revenge—a clear sign that she’s very sensitive to the way other people perceive her. It is perhaps because of this sensitivity that she finds the man in the nightgown so disconcerting, since he’s constantly butting into her life in unsettling ways.
Themes
In the morning, Sasha wakes up hating her hotel, which she thinks smells like a dirty bathhouse. Hoping to find something more cheerful, she goes to another hotel and asks for their room with the most natural sunlight. The receptionist agrees to show her their best room, and though Sasha knows she can’t really afford it, she goes along for the tour. On the way upstairs, the bellhop mutters to the receptionist, telling her that the room she’s about to show Sasha is still occupied. Suddenly, Sasha wants the room more than anything in the world—if she gets this room, she feels, she’ll finally escape her sorrow. But then the receptionist brings her to a different room, which is too dark.
Again, Sasha conflates wealth and luxury with happiness. She knows she can’t afford the light-filled room, but she still wants to flirt with the idea of renting it. Then, when she hears that she really can’t have it because it’s still occupied, she wants it all the more, suggesting that there’s something enticing about things that are unattainable. The entire ordeal implies that Sasha has a “grass is greener” mentality that makes her yearn for whatever she doesn’t have. Even though it’s highly unlikely that a luxurious room would get rid of her sadness, she desperately pines for it.
Themes
Sasha declines the room and goes back to her own hotel, which she now appreciates much more. All rooms, she realizes, are basically the same, so why bother getting a new one? A room is merely somewhere to hide from the horrors of the world.
Although Sasha was adamant about renting an expensive room in another hotel, it now seems that her desire has passed, suggesting that materialistic concerns are often quite fleeting. For a moment, it felt to Sasha like getting a new room would change her entire life, but all she needed was to remember that something so insignificant could never fully alleviate her deep emotional troubles.
Themes
Making her way up the stairs, Sasha passes the man in the nightgown. He says nothing to her, clearly angry about how she treated him the night before. But Sasha doesn’t care if he dislikes her—they can easily avoid each other if they both put their mind to it.
As if the man in the nightgown didn’t already seem like an ominous presence in the hotel (Sasha even thought of him as a ghost of sorts), he now outwardly resents Sasha for pushing him away from her door the night before. But Sasha doesn’t care if he feels insulted, since she has no problem with the idea of avoiding him—after all, she’s clearly very adept at avoiding people, since she has so much practice shutting herself into her room and spending her time alone.
Themes
Sasha goes to a restaurant that she and an ex-lover used to frequent. She doesn’t think it’s such a bad idea to go here, despite the fact that it’s a place from her past. When she sits down, though, two men and a woman walk by her, and she hears them refer to her as old. She can’t believe they would say such a thing, now worrying that she looks like a crazy Englishwoman adrift in Paris. Infuriated, she stares at one of the men, who notices her glare and awkwardly turns away—a response that, according to Sasha, indicates that he’s not French.
Yet again, Sasha is concerned with the way other people perceive her. Now, though, she actually has reason to believe that others are judging her, since these strangers disparagingly refer to her as old. Considering that she’s already somewhat paranoid about people talking about her, it’s unsurprising that overhearing a stranger talk about her in this way would deeply upset her and cause her to fret about her appearance. The entire experience also triggers her insecurities about her nationality. Interestingly enough, she turns her insecurities on the strangers themselves, judging them because they’re not French—a response that illustrates the cyclical nature of this kind of judgment: the strangers judge Sasha, and because this makes her feel insecure, she spitefully judges them back.
Themes
The last time Sasha came home from Paris, her family was angry because they thought she had died. They hadn’t heard anything from her and didn’t even know her address in Paris. Nonetheless, one of her relatives had left her a small amount of money, which was to be doled out in small increments. The rest of her family clearly disapproved of this arrangement, which led Sasha to believe that the relative decided to give her the money as a way of annoying everyone else. With her inheritance, she found a place to live in London, shut herself inside, and rarely went out. In fact, she decided to drink herself to death. Try as she might, though, she never quite succeeded.
Having had her feelings hurt by the strangers who called her old, Sasha plunges headlong into memory, rehashing the last time she returned to England from Paris. In this flashback, it becomes clear that Sasha actually comes from a well-off family. However, she’s apparently not on good terms with them, so she doesn’t have access to their money (other than the money she inherited from a distant relative). Still, though, it seems her relative poverty is somewhat self-made, suggesting that she has made a conscious decision to live her own life instead of conforming to her family’s expectations. As a result, she doesn’t have much of a support network. She does, at least, have her independence, though this doesn’t seem to comfort her in moments of sorrow.
Themes
Sasha now walks home from the restaurant where she was called old. In spite of everything, she’s in a fine mood. In England, just a few wrong words can ruin her entire day, but in Paris she feels more resilient—though maybe this is just because she’s a little drunk. All the same, she’s about to go to another bar when two men stop her on the street and ask why she’s so sad. She insists that she isn’t sad, then tries to guess where they’re from, discovering that they’re Russians. The men, for their part, “tactfully” avoid guessing Sasha’s nationality.
Sasha has strange ways of looking at her own sadness. As she walks home from the restaurant, she seemingly convinces herself that she’s not as sensitive or emotionally vulnerable as she was in England—yet it’s clear that she still gets hung up on fleeting interactions that have the power to ruin her entire day or evening. In fact, even the two Russian strangers she encounters can tell that she’s sad. The fact that Sasha thinks she’s more resilient that she was before implies that she wants to be hopeful and optimistic, even if it’s obvious that she’s just as depressed as she was in England.
Themes
The Russians take Sasha to a bar, where she insists that she’s not sad and that she’s rich enough to live a comfortable life. Eventually, conversation turns to the topic of human cruelty, and though Sasha thinks people are always cruel and terrible to one another, the handsome Russian disagrees: everyone has their own problems, and these problems cause them to behave the way they do, so Sasha shouldn’t write everybody off as “cruel.” Sasha and the handsome Russian agree to meet the following day, and then she goes back to her hotel, where she falls asleep fantasizing about dyeing her hair.
It makes sense that the idea of human cruelty would be on Sasha’s mind, since she’s so sensitive to the things people say about her (as evidenced by her reaction to a group of strangers calling her old). Whereas she resents the people who mistreat her, the handsome Russian man tries to empathize with people who are cruel to him. Everyone, he believes, is suffering, which means that everyone deserves a little compassion—even if they’re unkind themselves.
Themes
The next day, Sasha goes to yet another restaurant she used to frequent. She regrets this decision as soon as she sits down, knowing that the host has recognized her. Looking around, she starts to feel uncomfortable about what everyone else might do—even the slightest thing, she knows, could ruin her entire day. And yet, the other diners simply focus on their food, making it easy to tune them out. But then two young women come into the restaurant and talk to the host. At a certain point, they turn around and stare at Sasha, and then one of them asks, “Et qu-est-ce qu’elle fout ici, maintenant?” (“And what the hell is she doing here now?”)
Once more, Sasha is paranoid about what others will think of her. Unfortunately for her, though, her paranoia is justified by the woman’s mean-spirited question about why she’s in the restaurant. It’s unclear what about Sasha’s presence is so bothersome to this woman. But the ambiguity here simply reflects the way Sasha herself feels: she doesn’t know why she attracts such hostility—all she knows is that her worst fears have been confirmed, as she’s forced to sit in public and deal with other people judging her.
Themes
Sasha stares back at the young women. The language the woman used was inappropriate for the restaurant’s upscale atmosphere, causing everyone to cast disapproving looks in their direction. But her comment also made everyone look at Sasha, who now feels ashamed. She knows the other diners can sense that she’s British, which brings her great embarrassment. British people in Paris, she once heard a French person say, are like a plague. On the verge of tears, Sasha distracts herself by trying to decide what color she should dye her hair. When she finishes her meal, she walks by the young women without saying anything, wishing all the while she had the courage to tell them off.
As a way of distracting herself from her extreme embarrassment, Sasha thinks about her appearance. By pondering what color she should dye her hair, she tries to escape her insecurity, once again turning to superficial matters in the hopes that they will change her life (or at least profoundly alter the way she moves through the world). In the end, though, it’s highly unlikely that changing her physical appearance will make it easier for her to deal with interactions like the one she has in the restaurant with the young women.
Themes
Outside the restaurant, Sasha tries to focus on her plan for the day. But she can’t stop thinking about what happened in the restaurant. She tries to figure out what prompted the comment. Like her, the two young women were English. They probably thought, then, that they were the only English people who knew about that restaurant. Seeing Sasha, though, they were surprised to realize that older British women already know about the establishment (which has actually been popular among English travelers for at least 15 years). Either way, Sasha thinks about the comment and combines it with the remark about her age from the night before, so that it reads: What the hell is she doing here, this old woman?
Insecurities surrounding her nationality once again creep into Sasha’s mind. Now, though, these thoughts help make sense of the young woman’s mean-spirited remark, as Sasha realizes that the woman probably took pride in having found a beautiful, authentic French restaurant as an English expatriate. But after seeing Sasha, the young woman must have felt disappointed because she saw that the restaurant wasn’t quite as unknown to tourists as she originally thought. By thinking these thoughts, Sasha makes it easier to cope with the young woman’s cruel comment. However, she still can’t stop torturing herself by combining this experience with the other unfortunate interaction that recently happened to her, ultimately demonstrating that her insecurities are capable of overwhelming her even when she knows she shouldn’t take so much offense.
Themes
It’s time for Sasha to meet the handsome Russian man from the night before, but she doesn’t feel like going. She feels sorry for not going, knowing that the Russian might say something to comfort her and make her feel less sad, but she can’t muster the will to actually meet him. Going back to her hotel, she decides to have her hair dyed tomorrow.
Instead of seeking out companionship, Sasha wallows in her own sadness, isolating herself from the rest of the world. She knows that seeing the handsome Russian man might make her feel better, but she indulges her own loneliness by deciding to stay in for the night. There’s a certain amount of self-sabotage to this decision, hinting that Sasha purposefully opens herself up to sadness, perhaps enjoying—on some level, at least—the feeling of gloominess.
Themes
In her hotel room, Sasha lies down and plunges into a flashback about the last time she lived in Paris. She was pregnant, and she had to make a concerted effort to go up and down the stairs. There was a kind caretaker watching over her, always telling her that everything would work out. When she gave birth, this woman comforted her, especially after she finished labor and was in a nightmarish state of mind. Sasha couldn’t stop thinking about money, wondering how she would possibly support her new baby boy. She worried so much, in fact, that she couldn’t sleep. She stopped producing breast milk. Her mouth went dry. And all the while, she fretted about money and how to care for her new son.
Not only does Sasha decide to stay in the hotel instead of meeting the Russian man (who she knows would probably make her feel happier), but she also allows herself to think about the past—despite the fact that she knows these memories have a terrible effect on her. As she thinks about the past, it’s revealed that she had a son. And though it’s not yet clear what happened to the boy, it seems likely that whatever came of him is at the root of Sasha’s sadness, considering that he’s clearly not part of Sasha’s current life.
Themes
In the days after Sasha gave birth, the caretaker wrapped her in bandages, promising to make her look exactly like she did before getting pregnant. She lay like that for a week. To distract herself, sometimes she’d pick up her baby and admire him—he was always tightly swaddled (just like her), and he never cried. Then, five weeks after giving birth, she took the bandages off. Her skin was perfectly smooth—so smooth, in fact, that nobody would ever know she had been pregnant. But her baby boy lay next to her with a tag hanging off his wrist; he died while she was recovering.
The death of Sasha’s son helps explain why she has such a hard time finding happiness: she’s still recovering from a devastating loss. In fact, she may never fully recover, which is why sadness hangs over her at all times. To add to her heartbreak, the fact that her body doesn’t even look like she gave birth makes it even harder for her to cope with her feelings of loss—it’s as if she never even had a baby, meaning that her sadness is really the only thing she has left of her son.
Themes
Sasha goes to the hairdresser’s and gets her hair dyed. She thought she wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about her new hair, but now that it’s a different color, she almost completely forgets about the new style. Instead, she fantasizes about buying a new hat. As she sits in Luxembourg Gardens thinking about getting a new hat, one of the Russian men she met two days ago walks by. He remarks that Sasha was supposed to meet his friend, and she says she wasn’t feeling well.
Changing her appearance doesn’t make Sasha happier. Instead of changing the way she feels or the way she thinks of herself, her new hair color simply fades from the forefront of her mind, which is why she fixates on the idea of buying a new hat. She thus goes from one superficial concern to the next, clearly understanding that changing her appearance won’t do anything to make her happy but ignoring this fact as a way of distracting herself from her sadness.
Themes
Sasha and the Russian man—who introduces himself as Nicolas Delmar—fall into conversation. He philosophically talks about the nature of life, saying that if somebody had asked him if he wanted to be born, he would have said no. However, he obviously had no choice in the matter, so he tries to “take life just as it comes.” He suggests that Sasha do the same, noting that she shouldn’t “torment” herself. She isn’t rich or powerful, he says, and this means she isn’t one of the “guilty” ones in life, so she might as well let herself be as happy as possible. Delmar, for his part, doesn’t want to be rich or powerful—as long as he’s not “guilty” in this way, he can feel okay about trying to simply be happy.
Whereas Sasha obsesses over her own discontent, Delmar tries not to dwell on sorrow, especially if he can’t do anything to change his circumstances. His approach implies that the only people who should fixate on their own unhappiness are those who actually deserve that unhappiness—and the people who deserve such discontent are wealthy and greedy. In a way, then, Sasha’s relative poverty is a gift of sorts, since—according to Delmar—it gives her license to stop taking life so seriously by simply accepting that the world is difficult and that there’s nothing to do but take life “as it comes.”
Themes
Sasha can’t decide if she likes Delmar. He’s kind and sad, and though she might normally admire such things, it seems strange to her that he’s so young but already so glum. Still, she goes with him to a café, where they order drinks even though it’s clear to Sasha that Delmar doesn’t really like to have alcohol. Over their drinks, he says that she seems very lonely—he knows because he used to be lonely, too. But then he forced himself to go out more. Now he has many friends and is practically never alone, which has made him a lot happier. Hoping the same might happen for Sasha, he offers to introduce her to his friends, making plans to take her to meet a painter the following day.
Delmar recognizes that Sasha’s unhappiness probably has to do with her intense loneliness. And he’s not wrong: even Sasha acknowledged the night before that going to meet Delmar’s friend probably would have made her feel better, but instead she stayed in and felt sad. The implication, then, is that it’s harder to feel depressed when surrounded by friendly people.
Themes
That afternoon, Sasha goes to a hat store, where she spends hours trying on different hats. She doesn’t like any of them, but the saleswoman is kind and attentive, assuring her that all of the most stylish hats are hard to pull off these days—but the saleswoman also insists that Sasha looks great in them. Hoping to please this woman, Sasha agrees to buy whichever hat the saleswoman advises her to buy. By the time she leaves, she feels grounded and happy.
Once again, Sasha tries to find happiness in superficial things. She doesn’t even like the hats she tries on in the store, but that’s not the point—rather, the point of shopping is to help her forget about her sadness by focusing on her appearance, though it’s clear that whatever joy she derives from this experience won’t last long.
Themes
Sasha feels relatively good about herself as she goes from bar to bar that night in her new hat. Although she wants to avoid a place called the Dôme, she ends up going there for a drink. When she leaves, a young man follows her outside and asks—in a lightly accented voice—if he can speak with her. He’s incredibly handsome, and Sasha can’t help but find herself drawn to him. And yet, she realizes that he seems nervous and a little overeager. He must, then, be a male sex worker hoping to entice an older, wealthy woman.
Sasha is suspicious of anyone who seems overly interested in her, especially if that person is young, attractive, and eager to talk to her. It remains unclear whether or not she’s correct that this young man is a sex worker, and the ambiguity surrounding his intentions helps readers experience the same kind of suspicion that Sasha herself feels.
Themes
The very idea that the young man would go after Sasha offends her, since she doesn’t want to be seen as a rich and over the hill. After everything she’s done to look nice—the hat, the hair dye—she can’t believe that the only person attracted to her is a sex worker. Infuriated, she wants to tell him off, but then she decides to string him along for a while. She will make it seem like she’s interested and then, at the last minute, tell him to “go to hell.”
Perhaps because Sasha has been emotionally wounded before, she has certain defense mechanism to protect her from heartbreak. As a result, she assumes that the young man is a sex worker intending to con her. And though she might actually be correct about his intentions, the mere fact that she is so suspicious indicates that she has trouble embracing people and letting them into her life.
Themes
Sasha and the young man—whose name is René—go to a bar. Over glasses of brandy, René gives her his spiel, claiming that he has to talk to her because he’s desperate to unburden himself of his troubles. Sasha still wants to string him along, but something about his earnestness is endearing, and she realizes it won’t be all that easy for her to muster up the courage to deceive him. She wants to know what, exactly, his troubles are. He tells her that he’s French-Canadian and that he joined the Foreign Legion, which stationed him in Morocco. After three years of hating his life there, he escaped the military and made his way to Paris. He has only been in the city for one night.
It’s unclear whether or not René is telling the truth about his past. Either way, though, Sasha is drawn to him, despite her hesitancy to let people into her life. In turn, the novel illustrates that it’s actually quite difficult to be a loner who never lets anyone in—or, on the flipside, that it’s difficult to protect oneself against malicious strangers.
Themes
Sasha believes very little of what René has just told her. She says that she doesn’t even believe he’s French-Canadian, instead thinking he might be Spanish or Spanish-American. Either way, she decides to leave, but he begs her to stay, so she tells him that she doesn’t have any money—she doesn’t know what he wants from her, exactly, but surely he wants to get some money out their interaction. He’ll therefore be disappointed to learn that she can’t help him, even if he thinks she’s rich because of her old fur coat or her new hat. Still, he insists that he doesn’t want money. What he wants is to go somewhere to be alone with her, somewhere she can take him in her arms and comfort him.
Sasha’s defensiveness kicks in when she tries to leave René behind. However, he appeals to her loneliness by saying that all he wants is to spend an intimate, comforting moment with her in private. Of course, this is exactly what he would say if he were a sex worker hoping to get money out of Sasha, since that way he would be able to charge her for his time. But it’s also possible that he genuinely wants to make an emotional connection with her, and this possibility will most likely be enough to keep her interested—after all, as an emotionally vulnerable person, it would make sense for her to gravitate toward other vulnerable people.
Themes
If Sasha won’t go somewhere private to physically embrace René, then perhaps she can help him get some legal documentation. If he had a passport, he’d be able to go to London, where he could contact friends and get some help. Sasha doesn’t understand why he thinks she could possibly help him get a passport, but she agrees to go to another bar with him. As they link arms and walk through the street, she relaxes into the situation—he’s clearly after money, but since she doesn’t have any, there’s no harm in having a good time with him.
Sasha opens herself up to René on the pretense that, because she doesn’t have much money, there’s no way he can hurt her. What she overlooks, though, is the fact that he could hurt her in other ways. She most likely ignores such possibilities because she yearns for genuine human connection, thus underlining how important it is for people to feel emotionally bonded to others.
Themes
Under the lights of the next bar they enter, Sasha studies René. He doesn’t look like a “gigolo,” she decides, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t one. He compliments Sasha and speaks adoringly to her, but she keeps deflecting these subtle advances, thinking that he must be kicking himself for latching onto her—he’ll clearly have to start this entire process over with some new mark. Recognizing that he might actually be in a bit of trouble, she decides to help him by telling him which bars might have rich, stylish women who would fall for his flirtations.
Even as René compliments her, Sasha feels insecure and full of self-doubt. Instead of accepting his flattery, she assumes he’s lying—all he wants, she thinks, is to somehow dupe her into giving him a lot of money. And it’s quite possible that she’s right about his intentions, making their dynamic complex, as Sasha has to balance her suspicion with her desire to forge a genuine connection.
Themes
When Sasha mentions that she hates her hotel and wants to get a studio, René becomes very interested. He even says he knows the perfect place for her and could help her make the deal. When Sasha asks how he knows of a good studio if he only got to Paris the night before, he brushes off the question. Still, she doesn’t care. She has nothing to lose, so she keeps chatting with him.
René’s comment about helping Sasha secure a studio apartment is a red flag, because it suggests that he’s not actually as new to the city as he claimed he was. How, after all, would he know about an open apartment if he arrived in Paris just one day ago? The comment also hints that he’s eager to help Sasha make some kind of monetary transaction, reinforcing her suspicion that he just wants to con her and take her money. And yet, she decides to keep spending time with him—a clear sign that she yearns for an attractive and attentive man’s company.
Themes
René later escorts Sasha home in a taxi, which she allows him to pay for, thinking that she’s giving him a lesson about sizing people up. In the future, she thinks, he’ll have to be more careful about the assumptions he makes. When they arrive, he wants to come upstairs, but Sasha doesn’t let him. Eventually, he gives up and leaves. Late that night, a hotel employee bangs on Sasha’s door and tells her to come downstairs because there’s a man on the telephone for her. By the time she gets there, though, the man has hung up. She decides to stay in bed for the entirety of the next day.
In the last couple days, Sasha has had two experiences in which strangers judged her just by looking at her. First, there were the men who called her “old,” and then there was the woman who acted like Sasha didn’t belong in a fancy French restaurant. Given how much these experiences hurt Sasha, it makes sense that she likes the idea of teaching René a lesson about making assumptions about others—if he really is a sex worker, it seems he has assumed that she’s a wealthy older woman whose only chance to spend time with an attractive young man is by paying for his time.
Themes
