How to Read Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea"

1. Wait for a very hot day. No, hotter. Hotter than that. Okay. 

2. Find a place that has no air conditioning. This is now your home for as long as it takes to read a hundred page novel. 

3. You should probably be sick. Brain fever might be best, but anything that affects your head will work. A perforated eardrum, sinus pain and pressure, a headache that affects your vision. 

4. A storm will appear sometime in the night. A proper one, with lightning and thunder. You will half-wake and fall back asleep with forks of lightning still glowing on the back of your eyelids.

5. Everything around you will suddenly become more colorful. But also skewed. Everything is so bright and so hot and sideways. It might be the perforated eardrum messing with your sense of balance. Or the brain fever, giving you hallucinations.

6. Nothing is real. Everything is a dream. 

7. The woman at the dentist’s office calls you Autumn. Your name is not Autumn. They insist that your name is Autumn.

8. Your boyfriend cheated on you, maybe. He’s being super vague about what he did that weekend you visited your best friend, and now he won’t kiss you. 

9. For future reference your best friend’s advice on your love life is super worthless. 

10. There are ghosts living in your not-house. You saw them last night when you were not-sleeping. Also, you think you had a son at one point. That might have been a dream. 

11. You’re going to wake up. You’re going to wake up. 

12. Lightning strikes. A fire starts somewhere. You die, but not literally. It’s a metaphor. 

13. Start praying for a break in the heat wave or another ice age. Doesn’t matter which at this point. You haven’t slept in three days.