REVIEW: Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)

Book: Wide Sargasso Sea

Author: Jean Rhys

Premise: Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness, and her husband into the arms of another novel's heroine.

This book is a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, providing a back story for Rochester's first wife. I was really looking forward to this book but I didn't really enjoy it if I'm honest. I found myself getting lost and not really seeing how bits of the story joined together. Maybe I wasn't in the right mindset, but it didn't work for me and, despite reading it recently, it hasn't stuck with me. Possibly one to try again in the future.