I read Jane Eyre maybe 20 years ago (#2 of my favorite books). Don't read this review if you have never read it and were planning on it. It will spoil Jane Eyre for you!
I have always wanted to read this "prequel" by another author at a much later time in history. Unlike the book written as a sequel to Les Misérables (#1 of my favorite books, and I wanted to throw it across the room), this was a satisfying read that gives background to the major plot twist in Jane Eyre. Again, don't read anymore if you ever want to read Bronte's classic.
It was well-written, I did wonder why Mr. Rochester wanted to call her Bertha. Yes, I can understand for continuity with Jane Eyre, but why not call her that from the start.
Madness - mental illness - is it nature or nurture? That is the question in this story. This woman experienced a lot of trauma. Some may go mad from this.
This would make such a great movie, but I don't think one has ever been made because you wouldn't want to have people watch it before they watched Jane Eyre!
Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:
In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the revelation of the existence of Bertha Mason, the first wife of Edward Rochester (the man Jane is about to marry), exposes Rochester’s duplicity, disrupting his bigamous wedding to Brontë’s heroine. The madwoman in the attic plays a larger role in the novel’s plot—but that’s another story. This story, Wide Sargasso Sea, imagines the early life of Brontë’s strange, benighted character, detailing her childhood and adolescence in the West Indies and tracing her tragic progress to her ultimate confinement in Rochester’s Thornfield Hall. Far from the monster Rochester loathes and Jane describes with fascinated horror, Rhys’s Bertha (known as Antoinette Crossway for most of Wide Sargasso Sea) is a sympathetic, tender, poignant figure. There but for the grace of God, the reader can’t help but think, goes Jane. If Jane Eyre is the most brooding and beautiful of romantic ballads, lushly orchestrated and achingly sung, Rhys’s compact and haunting tale is like a jazz improvisation on the same melody and themes: edgy, exploratory, startling, and unforgettable.
