Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

The novel acts as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte's famous 1847 novel Jane Eyre. It is the story of the first Mrs. Rochester, Antoinette (Bertha) Mason, a white Creole heiress, from the time of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage and relocation to England. Caught in an oppressive patriarchal society in which she belongs neither to the white Europeans nor the black Jamaicans, Rhys' novel re-imagines Brontë's devilish madwoman in the attic. As with many postcolonial works, the novel deals largely with the themes of racial inequality and the harshness of displacement and assimilation. (Wikipedia)

This book was not very well received by the BBC generally and by Dennis in particular!

Dennis describes it thus, “a tawdry charade, and if she wants to write a book she should find her own characters. Rhys takes one of the most amazing scenes in English literature and crucifies it” he’s less than impressed. “It proposes a Walt Disney piccaninny piece, with Rochester coming over as a self serving money grubbing wanker” … end quote!

Leanne, nutshells it well in describing it as “a post colonial narrative about identity and how a place defines us.” Kevin felt that in reading it, there was muslin curtain between him and the book, leaving him drugged and enervated”.

I enjoyed the heady sensuous, if somewhat pungent, atmosphere of the book. I enjoy surreal Latin/Carrabean writing like this as well as those, for example, by Gabriel García Márquez. Nevertheless, with Wide Sargasso Sea, you do wind up checking to see how many pages before the end.

Mark

Scores were:

Mark 8
Leanne 7
Natalie 5
Dennis 0
Kevin 7

Total 5.5

Wide Sargasso Sea has been done as an opera, a film, and a TV series.

The film looks a bit of a dreary costume fantasy, but check it out at:

Leanne: “she never even wanted to be a writer”

Dennis: “well she succeeded”

The next book is “The Gourmet” by Muriel Barbery, chosen by Leanne.