The Bell Jar (1963)

Couldn't put it down. Fascinatingly dark and witty novel exploring how do we fit into a world that isn't shaped for us in the first place. Plaith writes characters that are flawed and human, leaving a sense of a world that is insensible at best. Genius. ( )

Deeply depressing.
Esther Greenwood is talented and successful. She has decent looks and is in New York on a big fat scholarship. She has her whole life ahead of her. But things go downhill very quickly for Esther. Things get so bad to the point that her doctor recommends shock therapy which traumatizes the poor girl and since her spiraling even further downhill. During her steady decline she tries to commit suicide and is consequently thrown into a mental institution. And that's when things get really serious... or crazy rather 🤔
This book dives into the deepest pits of our psyche. It chronicles the dark descent into psychosis. And as the main character is also the narrator we get an inside look at what's going on inside her head. It is almost maddening in itself to read the pages of this book. And it is heartbreaking to watch such a strong successful woman go down so quickly in flames. Very reminiscent of Girl, Interrupted... Or should I say Girl, Interrupted is very reminiscent of The Bell Jar since the latter was written first? The Bell Jar definitely takes place in a decade way before Girl, Interrupted did. However they ended in very much the same way.
I devoured this book in one sitting but then again it's not a very large book. This was my first Sylvia Plath book and I have to say I'm glad I gave it a chance. It seems to me that people who have read this book either love it or hate it. To be honest I kind of feel indifferent about it. I didn't adore the book but I didn't loathe it either.
Perhaps this is one of those classics that everybody should read once because it acts as a time capsule as well as a look into mental illness and psychosis, both of which it is written beautifully for.
With that in mind I would definitely recommend reading this book at least once to take a look into are human past and what may be even more scary, I look into our own human minds. ( )

Wonderful read. Read it through in one sitting-- skipped sleep simply because I could NOT put this book down. ( )

I have put off reading this book for years. The descriptions, comments and reviews I had seen, while almost universally positive, made me feel that I wouldn't like the book. And in some respects, I was correct: for the first third of the book, I wasn't interested. Esther's life in New York was of a kind that I could imagine but didn't have much interest in and her interior monologues convinced me that she was a person I could not readily relate to.

However, in the second half of the book, I found Esther more understandable (though never totally so). And though to my more modern sensibilities, it was upsetting that the doctors didn't try any drug therapies before electro-shock was applied, my intellect knows that this was common in that era. One thing Plath did extremely well was convey how Esther might find suicide a reasonable alternative to life committed to an asylum. ( )

Esther Greenwood is beautiful, successful, and talented. She seems to have it all. However, she is also going mad! Little by little, she loses interest in the things that once interested her, and common, everyday rituals become more and more difficult.

In this story, Sylvia Plath allows the reader to follow Esther’s gradual descent into madness. The characters she has created are so realistic, and Esther’s progression is described and explained so well, that it makes sense.

I recommend this classic. It is extraordinary in its realism, interesting in its explanations, and exemplary in describing something that many of us will never experience. ( )