The Bell Jar
By Sylvia Plath
Publication Year: 1963
Type: Fiction
Genre: modern classic, mental health
Read on 2019-03-10
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2019 Reading Survey ➞
★★★★☆
So good and so FUNNY??? Everyone talks about how depressing Sylvia Plath is but like godamn more people need to appreciate the way this chick compares male genitalia to turkey necks and marriages to kitchen rugs. So so wonderful. I honestly kept putting off reading this thinking it was gonna be a downer but honestly it wasn't the hopeless terrible dragged out affair I was dreading. Basically what I'm saying is I was scarred by A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara but this was not that so yay!
Definitely enjoyed the first half when Esther is hanging out in New York going to glamorous parties with the magazine and looking down on everyone because she is smarter and better than them all. I went into this knowing that I'm also a young person living in New York for a short period of time trying to be a writer so I was primed to like this. Super fun and unique perspective on the late 50s/early 60s that I had never gotten before. The writing is GORGEOUS and...god I have never appreciated prose this much. Wtf Sylvia. Second half got kind of weird and disjointed. The time jumps were confusing and the writing got kind of odd. Had a conversation with my roommate about how that might be intentionally mirroring Esther's mental state? But I tend to be skeptical of that kind of thing...it was fine but I have just never like reading about suicidal ideation and declining mental health.
