by Jean Rhys
First published 2016
In the decaying plantations of 19th-century Jamaica, Antoinette Cosway navigates a world fracturing around her. Mixed-race and isolated, she faces a marriage arranged to a cold English husband who sees her only as a possession. Her family's plantation crumbles, her racial identity leaves her suspended between cultures, and her new marriage becomes a psychological prison. As tensions mount and her husband's rejection grows more complete, Antoinette's grip on reality begins to slip. Trapped between her Caribbean homeland and English expectations, she must find a way to survive a world that seems determined to erase her very existence. Her only path forward is a dangerous transformation that will cost everything she knows.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 19th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, psychological-thriller, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Coulibri, Sea
Period: 19th-Century
176 pages · Paperback · W. W. Norton & Company
Content warnings: colonialism, mental-illness