Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

What an incredibly refreshing experience it is to pick up a book on this list and find it is not 500+ pages!  Wide Sargasso Sea is not only a relatively easy read (171 pages) but it is a very good book!  Never heard of this one or the author but the introduction gives several other titles written by Jean Rhys (Good Morning, Midnight; After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, Quartet) that I will look into reading after this project is done. 

The intro also gets you ready to read this one as one of the things you need to know to fully enjoy the book is that it was inspired by Jane Eyre.  Having read Jane Eyre ages ago and having seen one or two movie/tv versions of it, I was familiar enough with the story to appreciate this book.  Wide Sargasso Sea is the author's imaginings of the back story of the mad woman in the attic at the center of the Jane Eyre story.  Sorry, should have said *spoiler alert* first, but who doesn't know Jane Eyre? 

But where the mad woman in the attic in Jane Eyre is just a plot device -- the big secret that Rochester is keeping and that is keeping the "hero" and the "heroine" apart -- Rhys gives Antoinette Mason a soul.  She is a sad and complex character in this story as well as a woman unjustly and inhumanely locked away and Rochester is no prize.  Most of the story is set in the West Indies, Rochester's experiences there being mostly a sidenote in Jane Eyre, and a little of it takes place back in England. 

One quibble I have with the story:  In Jane Eyre Rochester's wife is called Bertha Mason and somewhere in the chain of events in this book he starts to call Antoinette Bertha for no really good reason other than he likes the name.  And she remarks later that "names are important" and wants to be called by her own name.  Maybe this name change is supposed to tell us something but it seems like a detail inserted to make the two stories match. Which I don't get, she could have just called her Bertha from the beginning of the story.  So, there is some larger point here I'm sure I'm not getting.  Anyway...........

I would recommend this book as a good rainy day/day at the beach kind of a book.  You can easily get through it in a day, and while you may not understand all of it, it tells a compelling story which can hold your interest.