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ambersnowpants 's review for:
Belzhar
by Meg Wolitzer
I wished I'd had a Meg Wolitzer novel under my belt prior to reading her first YA Fiction release. There are a bunch things that appeal to me in this story and I wonder how her craft for a younger audience compares to her adult fiction writing. First off, I listened to the Audible version and the narrator is incredible. There are now two narrators that I would listen to anything they did, Colin Firth and this gal, Jorjeana Marie. (Ok, small aside, I looked up how to spell her first name on Amazon and she has actually narrated a lot of terrible looking books. So, never mind.)
Wolitzer has crafted a book that feels like a million little phantom fishes of Amber-girlhood-past nipping at my memories and feelings. Reading and writing were my solace (still are) growing up, a safe space for me to be; I could immerse and let go. I remember reading Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar" for the first time when I was 16 or 17 and being very familiar with the isolated feeling of the said, bell jar. Plath was the first woman writer I had experience with to so boldly express her descent into madness, the haunting depression days. Meg has taken Sylvia Plath as the center from which her story grows and helps her teenage subjects find healing from their traumas through writing and literature. A mystery of a book, so smartly written, with language accessible and immediate to young adults. Pretty cool book.
Wolitzer has crafted a book that feels like a million little phantom fishes of Amber-girlhood-past nipping at my memories and feelings. Reading and writing were my solace (still are) growing up, a safe space for me to be; I could immerse and let go. I remember reading Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar" for the first time when I was 16 or 17 and being very familiar with the isolated feeling of the said, bell jar. Plath was the first woman writer I had experience with to so boldly express her descent into madness, the haunting depression days. Meg has taken Sylvia Plath as the center from which her story grows and helps her teenage subjects find healing from their traumas through writing and literature. A mystery of a book, so smartly written, with language accessible and immediate to young adults. Pretty cool book.