Review by in_love_with_bookish - The Bell Jar

in_love_with_bookish 's review for:

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

4.5

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life

Well, that was quite the experience. The Bell Jar was striking, engaging, mesmerizing, and immaculate; definitely a journey worth taking.

The Bell Jar is a story about a nineteen-year-old Esther Greenwood; a talented beautiful young lady who at the start of the book is an intern at the fiction Ladies' Day magazine in New York City. Through the beginning of the book, it’s clear that Esther who seems to be so intelligent doesn’t find any stimulation or real joy in her internship. The book follows Esther as her feelings of not fitting in, isolation and inadequacy as well as the derailing of her summer plans push her into a descent into mental instability.

“The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.

As we delve deeper into the psyche of our main character, it’s revealed how tormented she is not only by the death and loss of her father but also by her complex feelings towards womanhood and how she just can't fit into its structured rules and rigid definition. It’s such an intimate masterful portrayal of a woman succumbing to her mental illness written with such conviction and poignancy that feels so real it makes you choke.

But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.

This was a brilliant read through and through, definitely a story that I will remember for years to come but it was also a difficult read for me, The author has written such a real honest exploration of mental breakdown with a writing style that’s equally haunted and beautiful and a main character that digs her emotional and mental claws in your soul and refuse to let go.

I just don’t know if I can do this book justice with the words that I have. Saying that I loved the book is a tremendous simplification of what I feel for the story, saying that this book put through hell and heaven and everything in between is the understatement of the century. This was stupendous.

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.

Content Warnings