Rating: 
Summary: A lush and exotic spin-off
Review: "Wide Sargasso Sea" is my third Jean Rhys novel. I read "After Leaving Mr Mackenzie," and "Good Morning, Midnight" a few years ago, and I would rate both of those novels as "5 star books." So I came to "Wide Sargasso Sea" with really high expectations, and while I did enjoy the book, at the same time, I don't think it has quite the calibre of the other Rhys novels I've read. The novel is set in 19th Century and is in three parts. The first part is narrated by Antoinette Cosway, the main character, when she is a child. The second part is narrated by Mr Rochester. He is now married to Antoinette, and in the third part of the novel, Antoinette has become "the madwoman in the attic"--Bertha Rochester--the unloved, bothersome nuisance who stands between Mr Rochester and one of the most famous literary characters of all time--Jane Eyre. "Wide Sargasso Sea" as a novel on its own merits is an enjoyable story. Rhys captures the unique world of Antoinette Cosway at once showing the beauty of Jamaica and also the corruption and rot at the heart of the culture which was based on slavery. Slavery--although a thing of the recent past in Antoinette's experience--taints everything. Entire estates are in decay, and the creole landowners are suspicious and live in fear. It is a land of great beauty, and the language of the novel conveys the sense of exquisite beauty. I really would argue for a 'scratch and sniff' version of this novel. At times, the descriptive language is so strong that I expected the fragrances of the exotic, lush setting to leap out from the book's pages. The matchless descriptions of the decayed mansions, the colours and lush fragrances of the vegetation, the "orchids that flourished out of reach" all create an atmosphere of impending doom, and Antoinette seems oblivious to it, but at the same time, she is part of it too. Rochester seems to realise that there is something inherently wrong with the situation, but even he is seduced by the evil elements at work. I particularly loved "Massacre"--a place whose name no longer has any meaning, and certainly holds no interest to those already poisoned, tainted, and seduced. Antoinette is a doomed character (and here is the similarity with other Rhys novels); she is doomed in Jamaica, and she will be doomed in the cold sterility of an English attic. Bertha Rochester from the novel "Jane Eyre" is one of those fascinating minor characters from literature who are pivotal to the action, and yet their roles leave ripples of questions in their wake. We are told by Mr Rochester in "Jane Eyre" that his wife is mad and must be locked up for her own safety and for the safety of others. And yet, somehow for me, this explanation only led me to questions--such as where was Bertha from before she took up residence in Rochester's attic? Additionally, Bertha's displacement does not augur well for Rochester--especially since he has designs on Jane Eyre. The connotations are not pleasant, and Rhys created a Rochester who could also very believably exist within the pages of the Bronte novel. Antoinette Cosway is also very believable as the discarded Mrs Rochester. While I do not consider "Wide Sargasso Sea" as a perversion of "Jane Eyre", I don't think it's a perfect novel either. One part of "Wide Sargasso Sea" that I considered flawed is the depiction of the woman, Christophine. This character just did not ring true for me. I was also a little confused by the shift in narration, and was not prepared for the leap in time from Anotinette's childhood to adulthood. For several pages, I did not realise that the child narrator of the first part was now a married woman in part II. I was a bit confused by it, and ended up re-reading parts to get everything straight. If you enjoyed "Wide Sargasso Sea," there is a good chance that you will enjoy her other books too--although I would have to add here that if this was the first Rhys novel for me, I doubt that I would bother to seek out her others. I feel that the other Rhys novels were really far superior, and it is surprising to me that "Wide Sargasso Sea" was responsible for her reputation as a novelist--displacedhuman.
Rating: 
Summary: An Exceptional Prequel
Review: As a prequel to the classic, Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea lives up to the expectation of Bronte's novel. Carefully crafted around the most minute details Bronte used, Jean Rhys constructs a novel that is poetic and figurative in its language to describe the life of the woman in the attic. Rhys changes Bertha Mason's name to Antoinette Cosway as the first step in painting the Caribbean landscape which is carried through most of the novel, until the final part where Bronte's work threads through. Giving a voice to this mysterious character that Bronte chose not to detail sheds enormous light on Rochester's future perspective on relationships. Although short and succint, Rhys novel will surely give Jane Eyre readers a new light through which to analyze the time - honored novel.
I reccomend reading Jane Eyre first, even though this is considered the prequel. Understanding Jane Eyre will allow Rhy's work to have more depth, especially at the end.
Rating:
Summary: Jane Eyre's Bertha
Review: Goodness. I just finished reading Rhys' novel and it blew me away. Charlotte Bronte is my favorite author and "Jane Eyre" is my favorite novel. I had high expectations reading this book and they were exceeded. "Wide Sargasso Sea" had the literary quality that JE deserved.
Antoinette's life in the Caribbean, very carefully and vividly constructed, traces in an almost paranormal way the process of A. going mad. Soon I had busted out my pencil and I was jotting away in the margins.
The connections to JE are subtle and eerie, such as the continual mention of the looking-glass (and its final reflection in its "gilded frame" - yikes!) Rochester is treated with complexity in such a way that his character is actually believable as Bronte's Rochester too. A.'s relationship with her mother and Christophine is interesting and nuanced and does interesting things with A's identity and her conceptualization of her self. The final chapter of the novel is worth the crick in my neck I got for reading too long - and then some. The final chapter (back in Bronte's England) had imagery to give Bronte a run for her money.
"Wide Sargasso Sea" is beyond brilliant in it's imagery, characters, complexity, and readability. No reading of Jane Eyre can be considered complete without it. You must, however, read JE first. (And then maybe again after reading Rhys.)
Rating:
Summary: glad to have read it
Review: i had to read this book my senior year in high school and i'm glad i did. this is a novel about the strength lost by a young girl the same as her mother did. it end in much unhappiness and misery. but for some reason you walk away with not only a sense of justice but of happiness. happiness for the young girl because she finally got some peace.
Rating:
Summary: Unique and Interesting!
Review: I was given this book to read by a friend who just loved it! He said to me, "RR, you just gotta read this book!" I took the book out of his hand and nodded. Two days later I had to thank my friend for the great book! I loved it. I thought it was unique and very interesting!
Rating: 
Summary: :(
Review: Not altogether interesting. Not altogether illuminating of the human condition. Even as a companion piece to Jane Eyre, not altogether necessary.
I didn't particularly care for the tone of the language, the narrative voice, or the subject matter. This novel just wasn't my bag. (Neither was Jane Eyre.)
Rating: 
Summary: Novel without a cause
Review: Oscar Wilde once said that all art is useless, but if he could have read "Wide Sargasso Sea" I'm sure he would have agreed that some of it is more useless than others. It's nice that Jean Rhys, like many other readers including myself, admired Charlotte Bronte's monumental "Jane Eyre" and apparently was intrigued by Bertha, the infamous madwoman in the attic, but why did she feel compelled to write a novel filling in the blanks of this woman's past? The character of Bertha, who is said by some to symbolize repressed feminine sexuality, was intended by Bronte to be a mystery and to remain a mystery, and Rhys's attempt to invent a solution to this mystery is feeble, unenlightening, and unwelcome. Rhys has all the details in order. Born as Antoinette Cosway to a semi-Creole family of slaveowners, "Bertha" grows up on a dilapidated estate in Jamaica with a widowed mother who later marries a man named Mason. After a fire which destroys the estate (wink, wink) and in which her younger brother perishes, Antoinette is educated at a convent and becomes the bride of a young Englishman named Rochester who receives a large dowry for her from Mason. However, there is unhappiness on both sides of the marriage bed, resulting in Antoinette's gradual descent into insanity and Rochester's exasperation with his new wife's neurotic behavior. In fact, one of the novel's better moments depicts Rochester, regretful of the prospect of being inseparably tied to this batty woman for the rest of his life, contemplatively drawing a stick figure representation of her locked up in the attic of an English house, the effect of which is unintentionally comical but not a little eerie. The novel ends with Antoinette, whom Rochester now calls Bertha, as a pyromaniacal prisoner in Thornfield Hall as her husband envisioned in his crude sketch, and...well, so what? What exactly was Rhys trying to demonstrate with this little exercise in speculative character development? The unique intensity of her passion for "Jane Eyre"? Her sense of identity with Bertha because she was a West Indian Creole herself? The mess she could make of her prose by affecting a clumsy stream-of-consciousness narration that reads like third-rate Virginia Woolf? This is a misguided abortion of a prequel that does not merit an association with its source of inspiration.
Rating: 
Summary: Three and a half stars
Review: Rhys' novel, the Wide Sargasso Sea is an interesting work, and listed at number 94 on the top 100 fictional works of the last century. In style, this novel is similar to some of Faulkner's work in that much of the text is extremely first-person. That is, Rhys gets so dialed-in to the character that the perception of events and interactions blurs and at times is hard to follow. Also, the first-person perspective shifts subtley from one character to the other. Much like Faulkner, the reader has to glean that the narration is from another character's perspective. As such, this is not a novel to breeze through, but rather one that you have to absorb. The words and the characters seem to sink in over time. It has an ephemeral quality that may have something to do with the Caribbean setting. The literatti love that Rhys took the character from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, the "mad woman in the attic" and brought her to life. I, however, found that the strongest aspect of this work was the Faulkner-esque writing style, which transposed nicely with the Jamaican tropics. Rhys gives you a sense of life in the Caribbean, of its politics, its rhythyms, and its joys and despairs. The disjointed and transposed first-person perspective created an intense sense of the insanity of the woman against a backdrop of politics and socio-economic tension. The descent into madness of the main character, Annette Cosway, was confusing at times, but emblematic of Rhys' effort here. This is especially true at the end of the novel when the setting shifts to England and the once beautiful heiress has been transformed into the mad woman in the attic.
Rating:
Summary: Evocative and lyrical
Review: This beautifully written novel is as haunting as they come. It takes time to understand the rhythms of Rhys's prose, but it's worth the effort. Although I firmly believe that the book should be read separately from Jane Eyre (which I equally love), I also think that it adds another layer of depth and richness that Bronte would have appreciated. The idea that Mr. Rochester had a vindictive side in his youth is balanced by the fact that he loses his eyesight in the end of Jane Eyre. Jane's own decision to leave him seems even more justified, and his humbleness upon her return more genuine. But apart from the Jane Eyre factor, this is a mysterious and exotic novel of passion, fear, and betrayal. I have always wondered why Rochester hated Antoinette so much after he married her, and I have heard that it was because Rhys believed that everyone fears the depth of his/her own passion, and Rochester could not face the passion that Antoinette aroused in him. I think that Rhys explores this controversial theme with amazing finesse. The completeness of Rochester's revenge, as well as Antoinette's powerlessness to protect herself, is both heartbreaking and riveting to the end.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and profound
Review: This book is one of the most beautifully written works I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Jean Rhys transforms the words to experience. It's almost as if the reader is able to smell the island flowers, feel the breeze, hear the sounds. Not only is the writing superb, but the message is profound, drawing paralells between the subjection of women and colonialization which leave the reader thinking long after the reading is complete.
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