A book for the beach: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Kicking off a season of summer holiday reading selected by Guardian writers and readers, a heatstruck prequel to Jane Eyre

Where would summer be without a series of reading blogs? This year's subject, "a book for the beach", might seem limiting, but there are as many sorts of beach holiday as there are books to enjoy on them. For someone who, like me, spends their working life reading in straight lines what's new, is it any good? holidays offer the luxury of reading in circles. It was just such a loop that brought me back to Wide Sargasso Sea, one of the great prequels of world literature.

It began a couple of years ago with Jenny Uglow's wonderful biography of the 18th-century engraver Thomas Bewick, whose History of British Birds is the book with which the 10-year-old Jane Eyre diverts herself behind the curtains at Gateshead Hall, until it is hurled at her head by her odious cousin.

Continue reading...