Belzhar
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
I was sent here because of a boy. His name was Reeve Maxfield, and I loved him and then he died, and almost a year passed and no one knew what to do with me.
A group of emotionally fragile, highly intelligent teenagers gather at a therapeutic boarding school where they are mysteriously picked for 'Special Topics in English'. Here, they are tasked with studying Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jarand keeping a journal. Each time the teens write in their diaries they are transported to a miraculous other world called Belzhar, a world where they are no longer haunted by their trauma and grief - and each begins to tell their own story.
From internationally bestselling author Meg Wolitzer, and published by John Green's editor, Belzharis a breathtaking and surprising story about first love, deep sorrow, and the power of acceptance.
Entertainment Weekly's YA book of 2014
TIME Magazine's Top Ten YA of 2014
Kobo's best of 2014
Amazon's best books of 2014
'A story about what it means to lose someone, or something, you love. Twice.' Kirkus Reviews
'A welcome attack on continuing to live in the past at the expense of the present…Dry humour accompanies each journey in this readable novel, already selling well in America and deservedly so' Independent
'Breathtaking' Glamourmagazine
'Wolitzer has imagined a world for young readers that celebrates the sacred, transcendent power of reading and writing' New York Times
'An engaging fable about literature's healing power'Financial Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When 10th grader Jam Gallahue meets British exchange student Reeve Maxfield, she fees like she finally understands love, and when she loses him, she can't get over it. Her grief eventually lands her at the Wooden Barn, a therapeutic boarding school for "emotionally fragile, highly intelligent" teenagers. There, she's selected for Special Topics in English, a legendary class whose eccentric teacher handpicks her students and gives out journals that, Jam learns, seem to have the ability to take students back to their lives before the disasters that changed them. Making her YA debut, acclaimed author Wolitzer writes crisply and sometimes humorously about sadness, guilt, and anger Jam's fellow students each have lines that divide their lives into before and after, and all of them need to move forward. Jam's class is studying Sylvia Plath, and Wolitzer weaves her life and work into the story with a light hand. Some of this lightness is missing at the end, when Jam reflects how the journals saved her and her classmates, but this is otherwise a strong, original book. Ages 14 up.
