Title: The Bell Jar
Author: Sylvia Plath
Genre: Classic
Trigger Warnings: Physical abuse, sexual assault/attempted rape, vomit, excrement, drug use, alcohol use
Read To: 48%
Back Cover:
Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.
Review:
I didn’t know anything about this book going in, other than it was considered a classic and the author committed suicide. I picked it up mainly because it was a classic and it was immediately available at the library when I needed something to read to finish out the workday.
It really wasn’t horrible. I read nearly half of it. It was slow and entirely lacking an overarching plot, but there were enough things that happened that it didn’t feel unreadably boring. (Of course, most of those things happening were negative things and Esther making decisions that I absolutely would not have made, but book characters aren’t required to make the same decisions as me I guess.) There definitely was a distinct feeling of Esther having severe depression, but I didn’t really get any of the “losing her mind” aspect of it, even nearly halfway through.
Though I wouldn’t call it boring, it wasn’t exactly engaging either, and when I got to work the next day I decided to try something else before coming back to this. And then I read two books in a row (The Never Tilting World and Vita Nostra) that did “character descending into madness” so much better than The Bell Jar does, I couldn’t find any desire to pick this one up again. It’s not really a bad book, all things considered. It’s just not to my personal taste and I found it not engaging enough to bother finishing.
Bluejay Reads 