The Bell Jar
-
-
4.7 • 15 Ratings
-
-
- $1.99
Publisher Description
The only novel by Sylvia Plath, one of America’s most famous and significant female authors. Based on her own struggles, it chronicles a young woman’s descent into depression and eventually into suicidal behaviour, coupled with her quest to discover herself at a time when self-discovery, for a woman, meant navigating traditional models of social propriety on one side and new ideas of freedom and self-determination on the other. It is widely cited as one of the 20th century’s greatest novels.
Pwnguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The Bell Jar, the only novel by poet Sylvia Plath, is both an essential feminist text and a harrowing account of mental illness. What nobody ever seems to mention is that it’s also brilliantly readable—and often darkly funny. Despite landing a prestigious magazine internship in New York, young Esther Greenwood feels suffocated by the limits placed on women in the 1950s and by her own encroaching depression, which causes her to unravel over the course of a summer. (Sadly, Esther’s story mirrors Plath’s own struggles; she took her life shortly after the book’s publication in 1963.) Simultaneously beautiful, poetic, and vividly realistic, Plath’s writing makes us feel both claustrophobic and energized. Mostly, we wish she’d had the chance to write a follow-up.
