The Bell Jar
by Sylvia Plath
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sylvia PlathEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-10-17
ISBN: 0061148512
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780061148514
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Book Reviews of The Bell Jar
Book Review: "To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream."
Summary: 5 Stars
Admitting that you love this book is a bit like doing same about a train wreck, in this case the tragedy being Sylvia Plath's startling real-life spiral towards suicide. Well, then...guilty as charged. I enjoyed this book from its beginning "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs..." through to the bitter end. Early on, she declares, (p 2) "I was supposed to be having the time of my life." Esther Greenwood and eleven other young ladies (p 3) "had all won a fashion magazine contest, by writing essays and stories and poems and fashion blurbs, and as prizes they gave us jobs in New York for a month, expenses paid, and piles and piles of free bonuses, like ballet tickets and passes to fashion shows..." Unfortunately, instead of elation and excitement at such an opportunity, of it, she writes (p 3) "I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."
The Bell Jar follows her experiences as an intern in NYC during the early 1950s, college life (dating, avoiding her TB afflicted boyfriend, trying to lose her virginity), and mental decline, including time spent in a psych ward for electroshock therapy. This semi-autobiographical novel, filled with telling statements about her mental state; (p 71) "I was only truly happy until I was nine years old," (p 15) "I felt like a hole in the ground," (p 57) "I felt dull and flat and full of shattered visions," (p 81) "I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterwards you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state," (p 109) "A summer calm laid its soothing hand over everything, like death," and (p 151) "If you were going to kill yourself, how would you do it?" is a terrific, telling trip down lunacy lane. Also good: Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, and A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar.
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