I first heard about The Bell Jar after hearing one of my friends answer the 'if you could have 3 people to dinner dead or alive who would you choose?' questions. She picked American poet Sylvia Plath and after this I thought I'd Google Plath to find out what the fuss was about. After reading a short summary of Plath's life online I rushed to the library and rented The Bell Jar and couldn't quite put it down. It is a 'roman a clef' novel, so it's autobiographical just with the names changed and I'm assuming some events in the book have been embellished in some description. The book centres around Plath's spiral into depression, her mental illness. Some of the ...  Read the complete review

About the book The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is her only novel and it was originally published under a pseudonym in 1963. The edition being reviewed was published by Faber and Faber and is 240 pages long. Plot Working in New York one hot summer, Esther Greenwood is on the brink of her future. Yet she is also on the edge of a darkness that makes her world increasingly unreal. In this vivid and unforgettable novel about the struggles of growing up, Esther's world shines through: the wide-eyed country girls, her crazed men-friends, hot dinner dances and nights in New York, and a slow ride into breakdown. What I thought The Bell Jar is a ...  Read the complete review

The Bell Jar. This was the only novel that Plath published, which she did under a pseudonym back in the 60's. She was an excellent poet but is largely known for her largely-autobiographical novel. Her real-life persona in the book is Esther Greenwood; a woman in the 60s who has won a contest and is spending the summer at a New York magazine; she has many inner conflicts within herself, she increasingly finds herself suffocating in a bell jar of depression and cynicism, with a distorted view on the world and being unable to communicate effectively out of the jar. This gets too much for her and she ends up being hospitalised. The book is ...  Read the complete review

This novel was passed on to me by my beloved, who had told me how brilliant it was, but I had not believed her. Mea culpa, indeed. My perception of this novel was that it was for girls, but what I realised is that if that was true, then Catcher in the Rye is for boys. I’m sorry, I really am – I realise now what a silly, stereotypical notion it was. I do think, in fact, that Esther Greenwood’s story and Holden Caulfield’s story make a fascinating pigeon pair. Both are about the teenage to early adult mind, and although one is told by and about a girl, and the other a boy, both hold true for everyone. The novel begins in New York ...  Read the complete review

Who amongst us has not had at that awful ‘closed in’ feeling during stressful or depressing times in our lives when all we would like to do is run away, far far away? The title of this book by Sylvia Plath is a metaphor for just that. The Bell Jar represents that feeling of claustrophobia depression can bring on. You’re stuck inside it feeling as though there is simply no way out. The book charts the course of Esther’s (Plath’s) depression which leads to a nervous breakdown and her subsequent treatment and recovery. It is loosely autobiographical; Sylvia Plath suffered from manic depression thoughout her life. ...  Read the complete review