Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Originally Published 1966
Source: purchased

Wikipedia Summary:
It is the story of Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress, from the time of her youth in Jamaica, to her unhappy marriage to a certain English gentleman—he is never named by the author. He renames her to a prosaic Bertha, declares her mad, and requires her to relocate to England. Caught in an oppressive patriarchal society in which she fully belongs neither to the Europeans nor the Jamaicans, Antoinette Cosway is Rhys' version of Brontë's devilish "madwoman in the attic."


My Thoughts:
This is my second shot at a review for this book. The first one simply wouldn't post and I've had to start all over. So if this review seems a little lacking, I'm going to chalk that up to not having the energy to spend another hour on it. Sorry about that.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is one of my all-time favorite books. Some people love to read spinoffs of their favorite reads; I'm not one of them. I don't want my beloved characters tinkered and the spinoffs aren't always very original. So I put off reading this book for a very long time once I realized what it was about. But it's always earned high praise and, eventually, that convinced me to read the book despite my reservations.

In Rhys' hands, Bertha is no longer relegated to being merely the "madwoman in the attic." Instead she becomes Antoinette, the Creole daughter of a Creole mother and an English former slave owner. In the aftermath of emancipation of the slaves and the death of her father, life for Antoinette is precarious. She and her mother are stuck in a no man's land where they are accepted by neither the whites nor the blacks. A predisposition to mental illness and life's circumstances conspire to drive this young woman mad. More and more, the people she trusts turn on her or disappear from her life, including, eventually, her husband. You can hardly blame a girl for trying to kill her husband and burn down his house given what's happened to her.

Rhys also gives readers a back story on Rochester to explain his bitterness and anger in Jane Eyre but it's much harder to be sympathetic toward him. Boo hoo, you're the second son of a wealthy man. Maybe instead of marrying for money, you might have thought about getting a job.

As much the story of these two characters, this book is also the story of the West Indies in the aftermath of slavery. Rhys explores the hierarchy of the people who inhabit the islands and the mutual dependence that remains between the former slaves and their former owners. She  also looks at the ways in which a woman's life was completely dependent on men - what they were forced to put up with and how the lose of a man impacted their lives. I can see why this book is a staple in university literature; there is a lot to chew on here.

The islands themselves come alive as well, both their beauty and the way that nature will take back what man has tried to claim.

I'm very glad I gave this book a chance; I will certainly be thinking about it the next time I reread Jane Eyre. Which I'm thinking needs to be sooner rather than later.

Life: It Goes On - May 6

Happy May! We've been getting rain, and sun, and much warmer temperatures. I think spring has finally sprung! Makes this girl so happy to have been able to spend Friday evening on the patio, relaxing the week away. The lilies, daisies, irises, and peonies are all going great guns and yesterday I even started putting plants in pots outdoors. I can't wait for all of the color to arrive!

Life is back to normal this week, if still busy. There were lots of Mom things to be done - Mini-him needed my vehicle and help exchanging a mattress, Miss H needed help working on a budget - which I don't mind doing at all. I had a girls' night and The Big Guy and I enjoyed a beautiful evening at the ballpark.

Last Week I:

Listened To: More podcasts, including Annotated, Happier, and Radiolab. Thursday I finally had a chance to hit up the library book sale for more audiobooks. I came away with four and decided to start with Cranford. Popped in the first disc and it didn't work. Ugh! So instead I'm listening to Maggies Shipstead's Seating Arrangements. I thought I recognized the reader's voice so looked to see who it was - Arthur Morey. Hmm, that sounded familiar. What other book did I listen to that he read? Turns out I've listened to him read three books in the past year: The Old Cape Magic (which actually has a strikingly similar story setting), Homer and Langley, and The 19th Wife. I don't specifically look for books read by him but I do enjoy his reading.

Watched: The Voice, an episode of The Crown,  and I finished a season of The Great Interior Design Challenge. I've really enjoyed seeing all of the English architecture as much as anything.

Read: I finished Wide Sargasso Sea, I'm about half way through Hello, Sunshine, and I started Curtis Sittenfield's You Think It, I'll Say It. I'm feeling the reading bug again which makes me happy, especially as reading on the patio season starts.

Made: BBQ chicken and mac 'n' cheese, nachos, breakfast for dinner - if it wasn't easy, it wasn't getting made this week.

Enjoyed: Happy hour with Tier One friends!


This Week I’m: 

Planning: Gardens and changes around the yard, including enlarging some beds.

Thinking About: Everything I need to get done today. Yikes!

Feeling: Excited for Mini-me and Ms. S as they are launching into their next life experience. She is already in Rochester while he finishes out their lease in Milwaukee and preps for the move. We're going to miss visiting Milwaukee but can't wait until we don't need a wedding for us to be all together again!

Looking forward to: Dinner with a coworker and former coworker.

Question of the week: When I read Lincoln In The Bardo last year, I wanted to put a copy into every one's hands. But I'd read it through Netgalley so I didn't have a copy and I couldn't even loan them my Nook to read it since it expired. When I found a copy at my library book sale, I bought it just so I could loan it out. And, probably, read it again. Have you ever loved a book so much that you bought an extra copy just to share it?

What Changes Everything by Masha Hamilton

What Changes Everything by Masha Hamilton
Published May 2013 by Unbridled Books
Source: bought this one

Publisher's Summary:
In a gamble to save her kidnapped husband’s life, Clarissa Barbery makes the best decisions she can in the dark nights of Brooklyn. Stela Sidorova, who owns a used bookstore in Ohio, writes letter after letter hoping to comprehend the loss of a son on an Afghan battlefield and to reconnect with the son who abandoned her when his brother died. And Mandy Wilkens, the mother of a gravely wounded soldier from Texas, travels to Kabul to heal wounds of several kinds. At the same time, What Changes Everything is the story of two Afghans who reveal the complexity of their culture, the emotions that hold it together and those that threaten to fracture it. These lives are braided into an extraordinary novel about the grace of family.


My Thoughts:
Eight-ish years ago, I read and was completely sucked in by Hamilton's 31 Hours (my review). When What Changes Everything was released in 2013, I was just starting to use Netgalley and eagerly requested an ecopy of the book. Then it archived before I got a chance to read it and other books came along and...well, you know how this story goes. A year or so ago, I found a copy at Better World Books and it's been sitting on my shelf since, waiting for me to finally get around to it.

The problem with putting this book off for five years is that it doesn't feel as topical as it would have in 2013, when Afghanistan was still a country in the news every day. Still, the conflict in Afghanistan serves as a compelling backdrop for exploring cultural differences, our role on the world stage, and family dynamics. What Changes Everything looks at the ways that war (whether we call it that or not) leaves scars on everyone involved. You know me well enough by now to know that after reading this book, I had to go learn more about Mohammad Najibullah, former president of Afghanistan, whose actual letters to his daughters appear throughout the book as a way of helping readers understand Afghanistan.

There are a lot of storylines running through this book that all, in one way or another, tie together. As with most books that try to balance numerous storylines, I found some more gripping than others - Clarissa as she tries to cope with her own history and fears while dealing with a step daughter, friends, and the government who all want a say in how to proceed with her husband's kidnapping; Danil, who uses graffiti art to try to deal with the pain of losing his brother and the pain of a mother who will not accept the realities of her son's death; and Amin, who lives in a no man's land between the Americans and his own people and who carries almost unbearable guilt for the death of someone who tried to help years ago.

What Changes Everything doesn't have the tension that had me racing through 31 Hours, but it did pull me into these people's lives and made me want to find out how they might find a way to heal. And it raised questions that still have me thinking:

"Here he was, face-to-face with a question that had been nibbling at him for months. How much responsibility did one person have toward another? If what you mainly had in common was being alive at the same moment and in the same physical space, and then being present enough to see a need, how far must your outstretched hand reach?"

Life: It Goes On - May 1

Happy May Day!

So Dallas happened. I'm finally finding the energy to return to real life and have gotten laundry pretty well caught up.

What a great weekend we had! Lots of time with family and lots of eating. Our hotel had complimentary cookies and milk in the evenings. It's my new favorite thing for a hotel to do. We sort of took over the second floor of our hotel in the evenings and the breakfast cafe in the mornings. The cafe had a cream cheese croissant that I may have had every morning (yes, yes, I did have it every morning). We also got to spend time at the newlyweds' house and at the bride's parents' house playing in their pool. And now Miss H is trying to talk us into a pool in our backyard.

 Also, there was a wedding! All of my kids were together for the first time since Mini-me and Ms. S got married last summer which made this mama's heart so happy. There were almost as many tears as there were smiles. My parents got to have a special dance, everyone looked great and had a wonderful time, the venue was beautiful, and we got doughnuts to take home for breakfast! Sadly, I forgot the photos we took in the photo booth.

We did a little sightseeing, as well. My mom, who's from a very small town and has never spent much time in big cities, spent a lot of time looking up. My sister-in-law was almost as entranced by the Book Depository museum as my history teacher dad was. The giant eyeball mesmerized my hubby nearly as much as it creeped out Miss H and my nephew. We ate at some really good places and also managed to get our first taste of Whataburger (I gotta tell you, I don't get the attraction).

One thing I did not end up having time for was meeting with my long-lost friend or getting to meet any of my blogging friends. Next trip!

This week it's time to finish plans for the next bridal shower my mom and I are hosting, meet with some friends for happy hour tomorrow, get caught up on book reviews, and start getting flowers into the pots outside.

What's on your agenda for the week?

(Photo credits include Nile K, Lora H, Miss H, and The Big Guy)