Wide Sargasso Sea – Book Review
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
This was the next book from the Time magazine top 100 list I chose for the Orbis Terrarum challenge and what a choice it was.
The book is small and what a punch it packs. I finished it today and I am yet to find answers to many of the questions the book evoked in me. I am quite sure I will go back and read this book some other time maybe in a few years when I am older and hopefully wiser.
Set in the mid 1900’s in a beautiful and almost haunted Caribbean island, the book’s protagonist is lonely woman seeking safety. The book starts with the protagonist Antoinette Cosway – daughter of a former slave owner living in isolation with an emotionally distant mother, an invalid brother, a step father and nanny, Christophine – an obeah.
After losing their family home and brother in a fire set by the locals, Antoinette is set to a convent where the nuns teach her not to pray for happiness. She is married to an English fortune hunter – Mr.Rochester.
Part two of the book is narrated by Mr.Rochester is a wonderful narration of the paranoia that engulfs a penniless husband who does not love his wife and woman who longs for security and happiness from her husband – all while both of them are locked in a failing marriage.
Part three concludes with as Antoinette, now called Bertha living in the Great Rochester House with a servant guarding her. Bertha seeks her destiny and the book ends in a fire.
Haunting, disturbing and beautiful!
pooh
August 5, 2010 at 5:45 amIt is disturbing. I actually went through a phase of not reading and got upset with myself for not reading good books so I got into this challenge – I have spent sleepless nights, to craft and to read and that is the only way things get done here
Shruti
August 4, 2010 at 10:12 pmwow.. a lil too disturbing for me. How do u get time to read a book with an almost 1 year old in tow??