Title: The Bell Jar
Author: Sylvia Plath
Year of Publication: 1963
Genre: Fiction/Semi-autobiography
Format: Audio Book
Length: 7 hours
First Line: "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."
Summary: 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 feel bad for saying this because I love Sylvia Plath's poems, but I was not impressed with her novel. If you really want to know what this novel is about, just go to wiki and search Sylvia Plath. This novel is just Plath writing about her own metal break down at a young age but only putting different names to the real people. So of course this novel is very real and heart-retching. Plath is writing about her own feeling from her own experience. The writing is very confusing; Plath's thought pattern takes precedent over style. Many characters could have been axed out of this novel, like Ester's brother, who never speaks and is just there, and Dorieen who is just there in the beginning of the novel who is Ester's companion during the scholarship hotel ordeal and is never heard from again after the fact. Many reviewers compared this book to 'Cather in the Rye' and said it was a classic and a 'must-read'. But I'm sorry to say, in my opinion; I'd say you can skip this one
Worst part: That it was a disappointment because it was written by Plath.
Best part: That is was written by Sylvia Plath, who I admire.
Grade: C-
Other Books by This Author: The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel.