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rebekah27 's review for:

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
3.75
dark emotional funny medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
Likes: 
  • I liked the forward 
  • I like her writing style 
  • Well I can certainly relate to being the third wheel
  • Is it bad that I’m finding this main character so relatable? I mean there are some things I don’t relate too but still
  • The narrator is so funny 
  • This would be a good book to annotate if I annotated my books
  • I like how every chapter is more or less the same length (around 12-13 pages) 
  • Her character stays constant throughout, her breakdown doesn’t just come out of left field, like her descent into “madness” or into her mental breakdown makes sense 

Dislikes: 
  • There are definitely some offhand comments that have not aged well
  • I didn’t like how everything seemed to be solved by electro shock therapy 

Random thoughts: 
  • Character based story 
  • Medium to slow pace
  • It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting but I still like it
  • I like thinking about that scene in 10 things I hate about you where Kat is reading this book and why the writers/directors chose that book for her and what they were trying to communicate 
  • I feel like the praises that it gets were definitely deserved at the time that it came out but if this were to come out now I don’t think it would be considered such a masterclass in feminism and mental health representation/analysis 
  • I enjoyed it all the way through but I did like the first half more than the second half 
  • 3.75 stars
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