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The Bell Jar (Modern Classics) by Sylvia…
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The Bell Jar (Modern Classics) (original 1963; edition 2005)

by Sylvia Plath (Author)

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27,963496101 (3.97)2 / 602
Classic Literature. Fiction. Literature. HTML:

A realistic and emotional look at a woman who falls into the grips of insanity written by the iconic American writer Sylvia Plath

"It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath's voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal." ?? USA Today

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under??maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's neuroses become completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic… (more)

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Title:The Bell Jar (Modern Classics)
Authors:Sylvia Plath (Author)
Info:Harper Perennial Modern Classics (2005), Edition: 1, 288 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:None

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The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (Author) (1963)

1960s (13)
To Read (10)
Daria (7)
Teens (4)
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» See also 602 mentions

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Showing 1-5 of 475 (next | show all)
Somehow, in all my time on the planet, I've kind of missed out on Sylvia Plath. I had no knowledge of her or her writing, and I decided it was probably time to change that.

The first two things I noticed about this short novel was that the story itself seemed to very anecdotal. Small, almost unimportant events and observations simply strung together, with no real through-story. The other was that the writing itself is gorgeous.

So this sits—for me, at least—almost in the same region as, say, Kerouac's ON THE ROAD in that the only specific story is the main character's experience.

Yet, for all of that, as the story gets darker and darker, the book is impossible to put down. And knowing that this was the last full novel she wrote, I found myself wondering what brilliant offerings Plath could have produced, if she'd had more time. ( )
  TobinElliott | Feb 12, 2024 |
2.5 Stars ( )
  moonlit.shelves | Feb 5, 2024 |
I have avoided reading this book for over four decades, since I first heard of it. I thought the hype about it had more to do with the perverse fascination people, in general, seem to have with suicide and crime and horrific tragedies. Having read it now, I do think that probably was part of the hype, but it is much more than a tabloid-like expose. As a writer, Ms. Plath likely felt compelled to write this story before she could get on to other novels; that was the impression I got as I was reading it. Indeed, I read in the biographical note by Lois Ames at the end of my edition, that Ms. Plath said as much after it was published in England: “She told another friend that she thought of The Bell Jar as ‘an autobiographical apprentice work which I had to write in order to free myself from the past.’” It was an extraordinary book for its time, and it showed the promise of a great writer, who, unfortunately, took her own life before the world got to see her novel-writing talent blossom. ( )
  bschweiger | Feb 4, 2024 |
¡NEVER STOP A BOOK IN THE MIDDLE! This book started out bad. The writing was fine, but the story simply was not going anywhere. Then suddenly it is interesting (and especially relevant to me) and continues through to the end. The Bell Jar, that demon! Luckily mine is behaving right now, though we all live with the preparation and knowledge of its eventual persecution. ( )
  MXMLLN | Jan 12, 2024 |
Bare with me as i try to find the right words to describe the way this book has touched me. I normally stick to my easy breezy romance reads for the simple fact that they are relaxing and fun. This book challenged me to look at depression in a different way. I have a background in psychology so it was extremely refreshing to read about the struggles that a person goes through with this disorder on a real level verses an applied science level. I enjoyed this is a 5 star read for me. ( )
  b00kdarling87 | Jan 7, 2024 |
Showing 1-5 of 475 (next | show all)
Esther Greenwood's account of her year in the bell jar is as clear and readable as it is witty and disturbing. It makes for a novel such as Dorothy Parker might have written if she had not belonged to a generation infected with the relentless frivolity of the college- humor magazine. The brittle humor of that early generation is reincarnated in "The Bell Jar," but raised to a more serious level because it is recognized as a resource of hysteria.
 
The narrator simply describes herself as feeling very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel. The in-between moment is just what Miss Plath’s poetry does catch brilliantly—the moment poised on the edge of chaos.
added by vibesandall | editChristian Science Monitor
 
The first-person narrative fixes us there, in the doctor’s office, in the asylum, in the madness, with no reassuring vacations when we can keep company with the sane and listen to their lectures.
added by vibesandall | editWashington Post Book World
 
It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath’s voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal and make it as meaningful . . . as it was 25 years ago
added by vibesandall | editUSA Today
 

» Add other authors

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Plath, SylviaAuthorprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Ames, LoisBiographical Notesecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bottini, AdrianaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Dorsman-Vos, W.A.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Fleckhaus, WillyCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Gorlier, ClaudioAfterwordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Gyllenhaal, MaggieNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Kaiser, ReinhardTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Kurpershoek, RenéTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
McCullough, FrancesForewordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Muir, DonnaCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Ravano, AnnaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Original title
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Epigraph
Dedication
for Elizabeth and David
First words
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
[Foreword] You might think that classics like The Bell Jar are immediately recognized the moment they reach a publisher's office.
Quotations
That's one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket. (p. 69)
The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way.
"We'll take it up where we left off, Esther," she had said, with her sweet, martyr's smile. "We'll act as if all of this were a bad dream" A bad dream. To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream. A bad dream. I remembered everything. I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig tree and Marco's diamond and the sailor on the Common and Doctor Gordon's wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermometers and the Negro with his two kinds of beans and the twenty pounds I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a gray skull. Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were part of me. They were my landscape. (p. 181)
I took a deep breath, and listened to the old bray of my heart: I am, I am, I am.
I began to think that maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state. (p. 70)
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Classic Literature. Fiction. Literature. HTML:

A realistic and emotional look at a woman who falls into the grips of insanity written by the iconic American writer Sylvia Plath

"It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath's voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal." ?? USA Today

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under??maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's neuroses become completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic

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