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literatureandlace's reviews
224 reviews
Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer
2.0
When I was a senior in high school I picked this book up following a tour of what would be the college I chose to attend the following year. Much like my decision to attend that college, which ended up being all wrong for me, I regret the decision to buy this book some four years ago. I remember being taken by the cover design that played into everything I loved at the time: music, books, black and white photography (I was still the angsty teen tumblr girl that now lay undercover someone sort of normal person in adult life). But I also remember trying to get through the book then and thinking "this is so wrong." Now it is four years later, it is the middle of the night, and I’ve just finished this book and still have the same thoughts as my seventeen year old self.
"Belzhar" is immature, problematic, and quite frankly dangerous. In her attempts to look at mental illness in young people, Wolitzer (I wholeheartedly believe, unintentionally) makes a joke of the suffering included and the magnitude of feeling that is involved with these diseases while simultaneously proving herself out of touch with teens and conveying a forced narrative of adolescence. The plot is interesting, but poorly executed--as evidenced by the twist toward the end which is nothing but laughable, making the the illness of the main character also seem laughable. Had the twist been done with more depth, perhaps I could forgive it for its shortcomings in the area of realism; however, the twist, like most of the author's attempts at her own understanding of teens, seems forced and trivial in the grand scheme of what I see to be the intended purpose of the novel.
I give this book two stars merely because I do think Wolitzer set out to do something important, share a narrative of mental illness and adolescence, and she did it even before teen's mental health came to prominence in societal awareness over the past few years. Wolitzer, however, in my view was allowed to make a huge mistake in this novel, one that is dangerous to the rhetoric surrounding mental health, particularly that of young people.
"Belzhar" is immature, problematic, and quite frankly dangerous. In her attempts to look at mental illness in young people, Wolitzer (I wholeheartedly believe, unintentionally) makes a joke of the suffering included and the magnitude of feeling that is involved with these diseases while simultaneously proving herself out of touch with teens and conveying a forced narrative of adolescence. The plot is interesting, but poorly executed--as evidenced by the twist toward the end which is nothing but laughable, making the the illness of the main character also seem laughable. Had the twist been done with more depth, perhaps I could forgive it for its shortcomings in the area of realism; however, the twist, like most of the author's attempts at her own understanding of teens, seems forced and trivial in the grand scheme of what I see to be the intended purpose of the novel.
I give this book two stars merely because I do think Wolitzer set out to do something important, share a narrative of mental illness and adolescence, and she did it even before teen's mental health came to prominence in societal awareness over the past few years. Wolitzer, however, in my view was allowed to make a huge mistake in this novel, one that is dangerous to the rhetoric surrounding mental health, particularly that of young people.