Rating: 
Summary: Who is narrating this thing? It's anyone's guess.
Review: This book is supposed to be told in three distinct voices: young Antoinetta, Rochester, and Crazy Antoinetta stuck in the attic. But the narration jumps about and it isn't told in three distinct voices: Antoinetta is in Rochester's section, and the voices are so similar that it is impossible to tell who is speaking. And it is very contrived because you know (or at least those of us who read "Jane Eyre") how it is going to end. It's much ado about something we already know about. I gave it two stars because Rhys can really capture a setting, and the scene that foreshadows the fire at the end of Jane Eyre was wonderfully written. It's an easy read, so if you loved Jane Eyre and want some more of it, go ahead and read it. Just don't expect to be as moved as you were by Bronte.
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Summary: wide sargasso sea
Review: A thought-provoking book that is as elusive and haunting as the characters it portrays. The prose is beautiful and the descriptions of Jamaica both enchanting and frightening.Through Antoinette we see how easily the slippery slope to madness can be embarked upon and through Rochester, we see how quickly this can alter someone's feelings... The whole book has a sense of mystery, unspoken secrets and feelings. Not advisable for those that like a conclusive story with straightforward characters.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth reading if you've read Jane Eyre
Review: This book really gives you a different perspective on Jane Eyre, especially on Mr. Rochester and his mad wife. It leaves you wondering just how mad she actually was and how she would have been if her life had gone differently. It is well worth reading
Rating:
Summary: Atmospheric, but Dull
Review: This book is a reworking of Jane Eyre by a Creole writer. It drags on and on, employing multiple narrative perspectives, shifting from one to the next and back again. Very atmospheric with strong pathos throughout, I just didn't enjoy the story. Don't expect to be uplifted. The plot just dragged on towards the inevitable. Rochester was not at all a sympathetic character. If Jane Eyre created a wronged madwoman and left her in the attic after a brief visit, Wide Sargasso Sea creates an absolutely mean Rochester whose behavior seems too manufactured as a feminist revenge.
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent & melancholy
Review: I rate this book as one of the most beautiful ever written. It's also incredibly powerful & sad, but mostly beautiful - all the senses are heightened by Jean Rhys's writing. Passionate & delicate at the same time. Magnificent.
Rating:
Summary: Jane Eyre Purists Beware
Review: I must hate this book. Okay, perhaps only a little. Wide Sargossa Sea was an enjoyable read completing the puzzle created in Bronte's Jane Eyre. Having loved Mr. Rochester I found it difficult to deal with the characterization Rhys creates. Considered seperately Wide Sargossa Sea is a compelling literary work. Combining Antoinette's and Rochester's points of view gives the reader even more to complete the puzzle -- the reader is left with little unknown. While Wide Sargossa explains the unknown elements of Jane Eyre I think its greatest value lies in Rhys message of men's possession of and perspective on a woman's worth. Placing #94 on the Modern Library's Top 100 List may not do this book justice, but then again most of the panel was male!
Rating:
Summary: A good, too-little-known book
Review: This is a fine novel indeed!Jean Rhys's prose is compelling, darkly powerful, and touched by the magical light of the Caribbean. The story unravels through the words of its increasingly disturbed heroine, and offers a new, fascinating side to the tragical wife of Jane Eyre's beloved, while keeping completely apart from that book.
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Summary: Comparing Rhys's Antoinette Cosway to Bronte's Jane Eyre
Review: In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, the main characters depict two young women struggling for identity in a male-dominated world and time. Although Bronte's Jane Eyre and Rhys's Antoinette Cosway lead exceedingly different lives, they experience common hardships and become involved with the same man. Each women develops a completely different impression of him, yet both are strongly influenced by him in their own ways. Antoinette's character is established by Rhys to give Bronte's "women in the attic" an explanation of or behind her madness. Her years growing up in Coulibri's mixed paradise institute the conditions that lead to her unavoidable bizarre behavior which she takes on later in life. Her mind progresses into a "mad" state not only from her surroundings, but from the fact it runs in her family. The basic denial of her mother and only friend Tia crumbles her wall of security and drives Antoinette to trust only her creole maid, Christophine. Antoinette's world consists of constantly searching for the love and companionship she never received as a child. Like Antoinette, Jane endures a childhood of betrayal as a result of her aunt's constant abuse and rejection of love. Lowood School becomes a haven for Jane because she learns to deal with the difficulty she is faced with, while Antoinette is never afforded that opportunity. Jane expresses herself by concentraring on her education and career, as she deals with her own personal problems. Antoinette is never fully educated and allowed an outlet to direct her own frustrations. Although Jane creates a barrier for herself, she is still in search of the love and compassion she craves as a result of being denied as a child. Both characters in some way or another isolate themselves in a way that reflects their persona and results in the choices they make. Antoinette's various places of isolation include Coulibri and its paradise surrounded by the people who mock her, her honeymoon home spoiled by her husband who cheated on her, the infamous confinement of the attic, and most importantly, her mind. Antoinette never gave herself the chance to open up and be the individual she was striving to be. She was only familiar with the island she had always lived on, forced into her marriage, denied decision-making power and manipulated by a selfish half brother. Although there is evidence that madness occurred in Antoinette because of her family, the inability to deal with her mother's denial, the loss of friendship with Tia and the incapicity to resolve the problems with her husband collaborated together and ultimatly drove her insane. Jane, on the other hand, experienced isolation in many other places. These included the haunted red room, Lowood School and finally in Rochester's manor. Like Antoinette, Jane also displays isolation and conflict in her mind, but she learns to deal with it. During her years at school Jane develops a sense of individualism and education that helps her character become a stronger person. Between Jane and Antoinette the extremely different outcomes of their characterizations are cause by two factors. The fact that Jane was educated allowed her to succeed and the fact that Antoinette inherited "madness" prompted her failure. Even though Antoinette was conditioned to be crazy, it still ran in her family and in one way or another she developed into it. If Jane Eyre wasn't educated, her character would not have overcome what she did and succeed in so many ways.
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Summary: What an AWFUL book...
Review: Let me start off by saying that I READ A LOT. I have read many, manybooks; this one is pitiful. One of the main problems is that you cannever distinguish which person is talking. I find this annoying tothe extreme. Another problem I found with the book was the dadgumplot... it is completely devoid of interest. The book is just notworth reading. period....
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Summary: Captivating and beautiful
Review: This book was recommended to me in 1970, and I finally read it in 2000. Perhaps it was best to wait, since I'm not sure an eighteen-year-old could fully appreciate the novel's piercing beauty and emotional resonance. It's certainly one of the great historical novels, given its lush, unsettling evocation of the early 19th century in the West Indies, constrasting the physical splendor with the human squalor, but it's also one of the best "studies" of repressed sexuality I've ever read. It's a brief, but stunning tale (much more than just a pre-quel to "Jane Eyre) that manages to touch on everything from the consequences of slavery, to the crushing force of social conventions and even the effects of climate upon character. But all this begins to sound far too clinical--at bottom, this is a gorgeous read about a fatefully troubled young woman and the human constellation that destroyed her. Vastly better than the over-charged, over-hyped, emotionally-shallow novels that have been foisted upon us lately as works of genius, this novel is truly luminous and captivating. The only note of caution I must add is that this is a book for those who love good writing, not for those who require the emotions on the page to be as simple as those on a TV talk show.
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