Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Wide Sargasso Sea is certainly the quickest read of the 100 Best list so far. It’s a short book and reads lightly. It’s supposedly the prequel to Jane Eyre, i.e. how the mad wife in the attic came to be there. If you didn’t know this, you certainly wouldn’t guess. I think all the early parts of the book are well done but the jump to her being “mad” and in the attic is abrupt and largely unsupported. It feels like the author took a nice story that was heading somewhere in its own time and tried to shoe horn it into Jane Eyre.