The Bell Jar
A Novel
-
- 89,00 kr
Publisher Description
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels
“A coming–of–age masterpiece.” —Boston Globe
"It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath's voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal." —USA Today
The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath’s masterwork—an acclaimed and timeless novel about a young woman falling into the grip of mental illness and societal pressures.
The story chronicles the breakdown of Esther Greenwood, a bright, beautiful, enormously talented college student coming of age in 1950s America, as she navigates the pressures of society along with her own ambitions. While at a prestigious, competitively won position at a New York City magazine one summer, Esther finds herself struggling with the looming expectations of marriage, motherhood, and giving up on her dreams to achieve them. She becomes increasingly disillusioned and her mental health deteriorates, ultimately leading her to undergo harsh treatment and therapy.
"Funny, intense, enormously human" (Cosmopolitan), The Bell Jar is a poignant exploration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche and remains an extraordinary accomplishment from one of the country's most luminous talents.
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.
