Finished: Wide Sargasso Sea (Rhys) This one mesmerized me and I just couldn't put it down...the story of Mr. Rochester's insane wife...before she was insane, and his wife. You know...Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre?? It's not that it was one of my favorite books, by far, but the premise and the writing both lulled me into reading until I was done! The story is all about Atoninette's tragic childhood on a Carribean island with a mentally disturbed mother, left in poverty with her two children after her first husband, a crazy slave-owner dies. The islanders hate Antoinette, her mother and her sickly brother and won't help them at all. Then, another rich Englishman comes and marries Antoinette's mother and saves them from poverty. He actually cares for her children as well! However, the islanders hate them even more now that they've gone from poor "white niggers" back to being rich again. The islanders, in a fit of rage, burn down their huge house. The poor sickly brother is killed by the fire and Antoinette's mother, who never really seems to care as much for Antoinette as she did for her brother, goes off the deep end. Her stepfather, Mr. Mason, however, keeps taking care of Antoinette into her late teens, and until he dies. Upon his death, he splits his fortune with his own son, Richard, and Antoinette. Richard Mason is not nearly as good a person as his father. At his first opportunity, he accepts 30,000 pounds for his step-sister as he marries her off to a prominent young Englishman who has been sent to carry out this business of marrying and acquiring the island girl's immense properties by his own father. That young Englishman is our Mr. Rochester!! He arrives on the island and is sick with fever for three weeks and then rushed into marriage by Richard within the next week. Mr. Rochester can never get used to the differences in the climate, natural surroundings, and seeming hatred that emanates from most of the native people towards him. He does, however, grow to enjoy his wife's company for a few weeks and she falls in love with him. He can never truly say that he loves her, but he's getting used to the place when he gets a mysterious letter telling him all about the history of mental illness in the girl's family...and the horrid fact that her father and grandfather before him were slave owners. This puts him off towards Antoinette and he basically shuns her within their home. And being put off by Mr. Rochester, in turn, breaks Antoinette's heart and she does, in fact, go rather mad. Mr. Rochester does finally take her to England and lock her in the top floor room of his mansion after his own father and eldest brother die and he inherits everything. The last pages of the book reflect back to the pages of Jane Eyre where the crazy, locked-up wife steals the keys and goes wandering through the house. It's very "eyrie", lol. ok, that was dumb. Anyway...it's so sad to see that Antoinette was really a product of her genes and mostly her troubled environment growing up. She always loved her island, though, and if she had been left alone and not made to marry, probably would have eventually met someone she could have truly loved and vice versa. Such an interesting take on these characters! :-)