I feel like I owe Sylvia Plath an apology. This is a book I actively avoided for years because so many people (namely female classmates who wanted to be perceived as painfully different or terminally misunderstood or on the verge of absolutely losing their teenage shit) lauded the virtues of this book and how it, like, so totally spoke to them in places they didn't even know they had ears. My own overly judgmental high-school self could not accept even the remote possibility of actual merit lurking between the covers of something that such bland, faux-distraught ninnies clung to like a life raft.

I should probably also apologize for referring to every pair of oven mitts I've ever owned as a pair of Sylvias but I think the lady scribe in question was too mired in real problems to care all that much about my sick amusement's crass reduction.

"The Bell Jar," packed as it was with bleak truths, difficult topics and wryly dark humor, was not at all what I was expecting. Old biases die hard: I couldn't help but brace myself for a trivial tribute to mental imbalances, White Girl Problems and petty complaints disguised as life-ruining moments. What I got was an utter lack of histrionics and a sincere, to-the-point road map of one talented young lady's fight against her inner demons. Sylvia's alter ego Esther Greenwood (let's all take a second to appreciate the sly cleverness of trading "Sylvia" for the fictional surname "Greenwood") is so straightforward in addressing her despair that I couldn't help but extend more sympathy than I thought I could muster to her understated suffering. If nothing else, this book taught me that my own bouts of the blues are simply me being human and could be so much more debilitating: For that clarity of self-awareness alone, I am grateful.

Reading this as I neared the "Infinite Jest" finish line offered necessary perspective that helped me get a better idea of what it must have been like inside such a messy head. The relative ease with which IJ's depressed cast could self-medicate in secret or seek refuge where at least someone was trying to understand the extent of such gaping psychological wounds offered a jarring contrast to the way Sylvia/Esther seemed truly isolated from those who couldn't see how awful it was to live inside herself. While she encountered precious little understanding in both her personal life (Mrs. Greenwood's inability to see her daughter's problem as her daughter's problem instead of wondering what she did wrong just rubbed my modern sensibilities the wrong way) and from the medical professionals who were tasked with helping her rise above the sinking despair she couldn't escape, I finished this fictionalized semi-autobiography 50 years after its publication with a keener understanding of what Sylvia Plath endured than I'm comfortable with.

there once was a girl from the bay state
who tried to read finnegan's wake.
it made her so ill,
she took loads of pills.
james joyce has that knack to frustrate.

come to my blog!

The Bell Jar started off in such a promising way. Up to the halfway point I was convinced I'd rate the book 5 stars, despite its blatant (and unchallenged) use of racist slurs (especially Anti-Asian and Anti-Black slurs and depictions can be found in this book, so beware of that!). I just loved how Plath captured the feeling of feeling lost (as a woman in the big city, as a graduate entering the working field, as a human looking into the world's future). The book was refreshing in its honesty.

But for some reason, the second half of the story, once Esther was hospitalised in the mental health institution, fell flat for me. It felt like the plot wasn't moving forward and no new aspects were added to the story. Ultimately, I had to bump my rating down to 3 stars due to its narrative structure and its harmful language. (TWs also for fatphobia, rape, ableism and homophobia)

n  It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers—goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves.n

This is the first paragraph of The Bell Jar, and it serves not just as a perfect opening, it also captures the spirit of the entire novel. This first paragraph already sizzles with life. You get the feeling that our narrator has a lot to say, that she's quite clever, snarky even. She's good at observing things. She likes to put herself in the centre. She feels young, curious about life. Plath's writing is effortless. It feels quite modern, even though the mention of the Rosenbergs clearly puts the novel in the early 50s.

Many modern readers (especially young white women) seem to be able to relate to Esther. And I understand why. I truly do. In the first few chapters, Plath does an amazing job at making her heroine approachable. Yes, she's problematic and highly judgemental of other people ... but she's also cynical and sarcastic, she doesn't know what to do with her future and feels overwhelmed, yet she's also perfect at assessing her situation in a realistic and funny way.

n  I knew something was wrong with me that summer, because all I could think about was the Rosenbergs and how stupid I'd been to buy all those uncomfortable, expensive clothes, hanging limp as fish in my closet, and how all the little successes I'd totted up so happily at college fizzled to nothing outside the slick marble and plate-glass fronts along Madison Avenue.
I was supposed to be having the time of my life.n

And aren't these sentiments something most of us can relate to? The pressure you feel after graduation, the pressure to "make it", get a good job, start a family, or whatever it is. Esther feels it too. And she feels it in a way that rings true to Plath's readers. Esther muses: "Look what can happen in this country, they'd say. A girl lives in some out-of-the-way town for nineteen years, so poor she can't afford a magazine, and then she gets a scholarship to college and wins a prize here and a prize there and ends up steering New York like her own private car. Only I wasn't steering anything, not even myself."

Living through our third pandemic year, of having so many things in our lives be uprooted, of looking into a future that looks so fucking bleak and doomed, many of us will feel like we aren't the ones sitting behind the steering wheels of our own lives. It is external forces that govern us. Plath speaks to a truth that most of us had to quietly admit to ourselves. That ours is a generation that probably won't reach the mountain top, we are quite literally headed into the other direction.

It's something all of us have to face, even though it's hard. We keep procrastinating our lives away, we keep suppressing the knowledge of what the looming climate crisis will eventually do to our lives and the lives of our children. Doing anything meaningful with one's life can feel really fucking meaningless in times like these.

n  'What do you have in mind after you graduate?' 'I don't really know,' I heard myself say. I felt a deep shock, hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true.n

Esther feelings of feeling lost and lonely and overwhelmed are signs of her depression. She doesn't know what to do with herself and her life. And she so desperately wants to feel something. As someone who struggles with depression as well I saw myself in a lot of Esther's thoughts. It was a bleak and unsettling feeling, but also reassuring, knowing that one isn't alone with these thoughts. That's another reason why I think The Bell Jar still speaks to young audiences today. It's relatable and honest in a way that few books are.

The Bell Jar also speaks to a specific female truth. Yes, Plath centres whiteness, and therefore some of her feminist endeavors aren't universally applicable, but I still think that many women know the experiences that Esther and her girlfriends live through to be true. Sexual assault, rape and the belittling of women are continuously portrayed throughout the narrative. Whether it's Esther's friend's fear of her own lover – "'Stick around, will you? I wouldn't have a chance if he tried anything funny. Did you see that muscle?' Doreen giggled." – that is masked by laughter and "lightheartedness", the constant gaslighting she receives from doctors, or her meetings with men who treat women like "a playing card in a pack of identical cards [that] happened to be dealt to him."

Esther's advocacy against marriage is also something that will resonate with many modern girls and women. Among the most iconic quotes in this book are the ones in which Esther muses about marriage:n  

That's one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the coloured arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

nI mean, how great is that? Or her thinking to herself "The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters.", after her mother suggests attending a typing course.

Esther, despite her flaws and problems, is an easy character to root for. I would assume it's easier for people who are more likely to look past her overt racism, but even as a Black woman, I empathised with how hard her life is, not only as a woman in the 50s (her fighting off a rape at a party is among the most harrowing scenes in this book) but also as a woman with mental health issues. Plath does a great job at showing how the medical system failed her.

n  I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn't groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again.n

Esther is belittled by doctors and her parents, especially her mother, when it comes to her depression and illness. They keep suggesting that she can basically will herself to be healthy again. All her mother wants is for her to be a "good girl" again. When hospitalised, her mother tells her that she should be "grateful" because she had "used up almost all her money". Esther thinks to herself: "I knew I should be grateful to Mrs Guinea, only I couldn't feel a thing. If Mrs Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air."

And that feeling, of feeling trapped, of sitting under a bell jar, is something that has and will resonate with women across centuries and locations. It's one of the strongest images in the entire book. Esther feels like "the air of the bell jar wadded round me and I couldn't stir." It's the feeling of being unable to move, unable to steer your own life down the path you want.

n  To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.n

After her release from the mental health ward, Esther asks herself: "What was there about us, in Belsize, so different from the girls playing bridge and gossiping and studying in the college to which I would return? Those girls, too, sat under bell jars of a sort." She realises that the bell jar is not just linked to her mental illness and depression, it's also linked to her being a woman and having certain areas of society barred from her. And she knew that even if now "The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.", she wasn’t sure "that someday—at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere—the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?" There’s no escaping the bell jar, only in death.

And even though I had my problems with Esther as a character and Plath as a person, it made me sad that at the end of the book, Esther "took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.", whereas Plath would take her own life weeks after the novel's publication. She was, she was, she was.

Favorite quote: "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

3.5 "descriptive rather than insightful" stars !!

I told my GR friend Ann that I meant to read this since age 16. All the girls I had crushes on at the time were reading this book with their pencil skirts and Smiths Tshirts. I read some Plath poetry that I enjoyed but never got to this novel.

I spent a good deal of time reflecting on Esther...the heroine in this modern classic. She is a fascinating study in female narcissism that mistakes herself for being misunderstood, special and superior to men, lesbians and those of other social classes and ethnicities. She is raised by a working class widowed mother whom Esther feels a great deal of disdain and hostility towards. Esther, however, continually struggles for her independence, dealing with her suppressed libido and I suspect significant lesbian tendencies of her own. None of this is unusual in late adolescent females who consider themselves both world weary and special.

Unfortunately Esther suffers also from unprocessed grief, school disappointments and a traumatic event that bring out her biological vulnerability,in her case, either very severe depressive psychosis or more likely a schizoaffective disorder that render her non-functional, at times delusional and severely suicidal.

This book is her journey from confused spoiled brat to a young woman with a horrendous mental illness and her journey back to the living world. The book is very adept at describing the moral and the social roles of white middle class Northeastern men and women as well as the hypocrisies of that time period. At times the book is hilariously funny despite being about a young woman's immense psychic suffering.

This book did not reach four star status however. I found much of it fragmented, unfinished and the prose (unlike her poetry) rather pedestrian more than inspired. I also found that although I found the character most fascinating I was not able to empathize or understand to the degree that I had hoped for.

n
وكانت فكرة أن أقتل نفسي قد رسخت في عقلي بهدوء مثل شجرة أو زهرة
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n

n

في عام 1963 كانت سيلفيا بلاث قد حسمت أمرها‏
أطلت على طفليها اللذين لم يكن عمر أكبرهما قد بلغ العامين بعد
أطعمتهما وتركت مزيدا من الطعام واللبن‏
فتحت النوافذ عن آخرها
ثم تهادت بخفة إلى المطبخ
وسدت كل منافذ الهواء
وفتحت صمامات الغاز‏
وأرقدت رأسها المعذّب المختنق بناقوسه الزجاجي‏ في الفرن
‏ وتركت نفسها تتسرب ببطء إلى العالم الآخر‏

;;;;;;;;;;;

من الصعب أن تقرأ كتابا لكاتب انتحر دون أن تبحث به ‏
عن كل الاشارات التي قد تدل على أنه سيفعلها قريبا
رغم أن ذلك يبدو طفوليا وساذجا

لا يمكنك أن تفصل بين الرواية وسيلفيا‏
لا يمكنك تقييمها تقييما أدبيا محايدا ‏
فهي شهقات سيلفيا الأخيرة قبل اقدامها على الانتحار

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

n
‏-أتعرفين ما هي القصيدة يا إستر؟
‏-لا ، ما القصيدة؟
‏-إنها شيء من الغبار
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n

n
الناقوس الزجاجي
هذا العالم المشوه الذي ينتج عن مرض الادراك الحسي الفصامي
بأعراضه المدمرة
وغلافه الزجاجي الذي يحيط بعقلك فحرق ويمزق ويميت‏

حين تموت الأبجدية أمام شاعرة
فتستحيل الحروف طلاسمًا ‏
ويبدو كل ما حولها خطرا وغير حقيقي
ما الذي يتبقى؟
هل لك أن تتخيل أن تتهاوى الأبجدية أمام شاعرة فلا تستطيع الامساك بها؟
بل تخرج لها لسانها في تحد وسخرية بينما ترقد هي تتعاطى صدمات الكهرباء ومرارة الخوف؟؟
هكذا حاولت سيلفيا تصوير عالمها والناس فيه مثلما رأته في العدسة المشوهة للناقوس الزجاجي -على حد قولها

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كل شيء يبدو أكثر حدة مع أوجاعك النفسية
تغدو أعصابك عارية
كل تفاعل تمر به يتشوه بداخلك
كل مشكلة حياتية تغدو لغزاً فلسفيًا ولعنة من السماء

ان المنظور المنحرف الذي ترى به استر العالم المحيط بها
هو نفسه منظور سيلفيا
استر هي سيلفيا في وقت ما من حياتها
‏لاحظ حتى أن الأسماء سيلفيا، إستر، ‏
ثم إيلين الشخصية التي تتخيلها إستر في روايتها
كلهن تتطابق حروف أسمائهن في الإنجليزية
كلهن سيلفيا

تقع إستر –بطلة روايتنا فريسة لمرض
يحيط دماغها المسكين بشرائح زجاجية ‏
تصبحٍ كل ذكرياتها
المصهورة بألف لون وطعم ورائحة
هي المنظر الطبيعي‏ الحقيقي
وليست الألوان المشبعة بها الطبيعة الخضراء
التي قد تبدو لنظرها سخيفة

في كل مرة تجرب طريقة جديدة وتفشل في اتقانها
حتى كانت اللحظة التي شقت فيها رسغيها
واختبأت لتموت في قبو المنزل

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n
لا شيء يوطّد عرى صداقتك مع شخص آخر أكثر من التقيؤ في حضوره
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n

n
وكانت سيلفيا بخفة دم غريبة تتحدث عن أفكارها عن الانتحار وعما قد يعوقها عنه فلا تملك إلا أن تقع في حبها
كأن تقطع شرايينها في ماء دافئ فيكون الماء أكثر برودة مما ينبغي مثلا‏
‎:D

لسيلفيا عالمها الرائع الخاص بها وحدها
وستكتشفه بعمق مع قصائدها المذهلة

n
أكره الأفلام الملونة حيث يبدو كل شخص وكأنه مضطر لارتداء أزياء رهيبة في كل مشهد جديد
والوقوف في الجوار كمنشر الغسيل
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n

n
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قرب النهاية قال بدي لإستر ببساطة :‏
‏ أتساءل من ستتزوجين الآن يا إستر وقد كنتِ ...هنا –يقصد المصحة
وعندما تشابك قدري سيلفيا وتيد ‏
لم تكن تعلم أنه بشهوته لمطاردة النساء واتخاذ عشيقات ‏
قد سطر الحرف الأخير في حلم سعادتها ‏
‏ الذي انتهى سريعا كشهاب في حياتها القصيرة البائسة‏

كما تشابهت الجملة التي قالها بدي لإستر
هل هناك شيء في يحيل النساء مجنونات؟"‏"
بحياة تيد نفسه بطريقة مثيرة للاستغراب
فقد انتحرت زوجته ثم عشيقته كلتاهما بالغاز
‏" فهل هناك شيئاً في تيد يجعل النساء تقدمن على الانتحار وبالغاز تحديدا؟؟!!"‏

دعنا نحاول الجواب هنا
رسائل عيد الميلاد..ديوان تيد هيوز إلى سيلفيا بلاث
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

‏"كان علي أن أكتب لأتحرر من الماضي"‏
هل استرجعت سيلفيا الماضي وغاصت فيه مجددا؟ ‏
هل تحولت تجربة الكتابة إلى استعادة الوجع كله
بدلا من أن تكون طريقة شافية ناجحة؟
ألم تستطع اغلاق صفحة الماضي وتتطلع إلى حياة أكثر استقرارا؟؟

يبدو أنها أجابتنا عن هذا السؤال
‏.......‏

I've never shied away from depressing material, but there's a difference between the tone serving the story, and a relentlessly depressing work that goes entirely nowhere. I know it can be viewed as a glimpse into Plath's mind, but I would rather do a lot of things, some quite painful, than read this again. It hurt to get through it, and I think it's self-indulgent and serves no real artistic purpose. Which is truly a shame, as I love a lot of Plath's poetry.

Claustrophobic, alienating and surprisingly modern
She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist.

Having it all in New York
I was supposed to be having the time of my life.
Esther Greenwood seemingly has it all, straight A’s, youth, benefactors and a summer internship at a fancy New York based magazine.
And yet she is depressed.

The lifestyle at the magazine, with interviews with famous people, caviar, avocado and crab meat filled buffets and movie premieres, reminded me both of the YouTubers and Instagrammers of present day and the opulence of The Great Gatsby.
The musings about wanting to do everything perfectly, but not really knowing what she wants to do, feel very modern and millenial like. Also the thought of all her possible futures, as ripe figs at the end of a branching tree flowing from where she was now, and the terror of choosing one and losing the rest, feels very modern.

Esther in New York is not necessarily a kind person in my view (in that sense well reflecting the cruelty of youth): leaving a guy standing because he’s to short and having her friend sleep in a pool of vomit and puking in a taxi. Also all the focus on accomplishments and Ivy League education made her less than sympathetic. Her friends are admittingly not the best to be hanging around: the diamond and the confrontation with Marco confused me quite a bit, but also lead to a shift from New York to home and hospitalization.

Losing oneself at home
The more hopeless you were, the further away they hid you.
So much sexism comes back in the The Bell Jar, making you understand very well why Esther doesn’t want to ever marry. Her mother tries to come closer to Esther but in the end she just loses all grip (I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full).

A need for inaction, being done with everything and a wish for abnegation or self destruction follows. Especially moving is a scene where she just wants to disappear beyond reach of anyone she knows (I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come) by crawling into a dark space.
The all absorbing obsession with possible ways to kill herself, tracts at impersonal asylums, shock therapy and the pressure to feel better but simultaneously feeling like everything is forever the same, are told in a haunting, breathless manner by Sylvia Plath.

Reminiscent works and concluding thoughts
This novel is classic for good reason and while reading it reminded me of quite a lot of other later literary works. The Girl I Left Behind came to mind when Esther visited her hopeful fiance who has tuberculosis. Norwegian Wood in that sense also popped up in my mind, not just because of the clinic at the mountain scenes but also due to emptiness and uncertainty of being young and a student. In that sense this novel also made me think of the work of Sally Rooney, with seemingly successful young people being unhappy. The suicidal thoughts of Esther made me think of one of the storylines in The Hours.
And finally the scenes in asylums made me think of the horror writing of Stephen King in The Institute.

Reading The Bell Jar is like getting a glimpse of what is under the pavement of everyday life, and in the end Plath keeps the fate of Esther ambiguously powerful. The eloquent way the author captures the alienation depression brings about in small, piercing sentences from Esther, will stay with me for quite some time:
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.

I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I’d never seen before in my life.

I felt like a hole in the ground

This is a disturbingly frightening journey through the mind of a young girl suffering from depression in the 1950's. How far we have come in the last few decades in recognizing depression as a mental illness and treating it with much less radical techniques than electric shock.
Ester Greenwood is 19 and her future is just starting to unfold. Yet, day by day, she is questioning herself: her capabilities, her confidence, who she is, and what does it mean. Her thoughts turn dark and helplessness envelopes her in a tight, downward spiral.
Plath captures the emotional characterization of depression and the utter helplessness that accompanies it. I truly felt like I was living this horror with her. 4+ ★

n  n
The Bell Jar tells us the story of Esther Greenwood, a woman from Boston who comes to live in New York City. Sylvia Plath wrote this novel under the pseudonym Victor Lucas. The author passed away one month after this book was published. The public was eager to find the similarities between Esther Greenwood and Ms. Plath at that time.

Esther's depression and mental breakdown, electroconvulsive therapy, and suicide attempt are all shrewdly depicted by the author. There are multiple instances where the author sharply criticizes the patriarchal society in America at that time. The search for feminine independence is portrayed brilliantly with the help of the extraordinary narrative style. This is one of the best semi-autobiographical novels that I have read.

n  “The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence." n

The protagonist Esther Greenwood is largely based on Sylvia Plath herself. She is a young, aspiring writer who has been given a guest internship at a fashion magazine, and hopes to make it as a poet some day. Unfortunately, Esther is struggling to fight off psychological afflictions that eventually lead to a nervous breakdown. The breakdown that Esther Greenwood experiences in the novel is a portrayal of the breakdown that Plath suffered at age twenty. Esther is completely impaired during her stint with mental illness: barely able to read, speak or think. She is a smart and accomplished woman with a normal exterior, and therefore her breakdown doesn't make much sense.

The novel raises the question of whether happy and healthy living is a matter of choice or fate, and explores if there is any hope for people who swear that they are innately flawed.

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am”, one of the most famous quotes from the novel. Plath phrases things beautifully. The tone of the novel is very consistent too. It maintains a dark vibe with a sense longing for the past.

4.5

I understand suicide newly after reading The Bell Jar. Plath illustrated a perpetual loop of living, which vacillated from one extreme to another. She’d make obsessive effort towards something, even if inconsequential to her life, and became ruthless towards others in this pursuit. Then came the pain and exhaustion from the effort, the rage and resentment with which she pushed the world away to have no responsibilities, that primal resentment that comes from the rage at your mother for birthing you, for putting you here and making you do all the work of living.

Finally, her obsessive thinking lead to planning her own suicide, from big picture to details, giving her purpose and drive. She’d escape the loop, only to be engulfed again in a sudden wave. One of the most beautiful passages was when she stood at her father’s grave, and I thought she was finally surrendering to her sorrow, finally letting it wash her clean. Then her mind raced off to a suicide method, just like a good OCD thought will.

I’ve always said I’ve learned more about life from fiction than nonfiction. Although I read and enjoy more nonfiction now than I used to, I still think that’s true. Fiction is for the empathic, who learn by invitation to inhabit an individual, a society, a time and/or a place. For me, there’s no learning as deep.

I tend to prefer emotional inhabitance of the most intimate kind, where I am transformed by the understanding of a human being different from me, yet with aspects of overlap. I’ve never seriously considered suicide, but I’ve often wished the world would stop, and I’m aquainted with OCD. I know there isn’t one answer to why someone would choose to end their life: Tove Ditlevsen’s Copenhagen Trilogy was a gorgeous work of autobiographical fiction about another female writer who went that way, and although there was overlap between these women, there were also clear differences. But for 10 years I’ve wondered why someone I knew, who seemed to have so many internal resources, took his own life, and Plath’s sharing of her inner dynamics pointed me to a truth about him formerly unknown.

Apart from that? It’s a good book. I thought it might feel too young, that I may have missed my time with it. It didn’t. I didn’t. It was the right time.

I dare you to read this and not get depressed