About this item
Highlights
- One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels"A coming-of-age masterpiece. . . .
- Author(s): Sylvia Plath
- 288 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
Description
About the Book
This extraordinary work--echoing Plath's own experiences as a rising writer/editor in the early 1950s--chronicles the nervous breakdown of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful, but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time.Book Synopsis
One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels
"A coming-of-age masterpiece. . . . Sylvia Plath has become one of the influential writers of her time." --Boston Globe
Sylvia Plath's masterwork--an acclaimed and enduring novel about a young woman falling into the grip of mental illness and societal pressures
Esther Greenwood is a bright, beautiful, enormously talented young woman, but she's slowly going under--maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her neurosis becomes palpably real, even rational--as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.
This edition features extra insights into the book and author.
From the Back Cover
The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
Review Quotes
"There's the depression of popular conception--the listless sadness of a character in a pharmaceutical advertisement--and then there's the biting, brisk, darkly comic version that Plath brings to life in The Bell Jar. It is a curiously unyielding read: Though the book is semi-autobiographical, Plath's lucid prose belies the mystery she was and remains. . . . The Bell Jar is as frustrating and brilliant as its author." -- Elizabeth Bruenig, The Atlantic
"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
"Esther Greenwood's account of her years in the bell jar is as clear and readable as it is witty and disturbing. . . . [This] is not a potboiler, nor a series of ungrateful caricatures: it is literature." -- New York Times
"The first-person narrative fixes us there, in the doctor's office, in the asylum, in the madness, with no reassuring vacations when we can keep company with the sane and listen to their lectures." -- Washington Post
"The narrator simply describes herself as feeling very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel. The in-between moment is just what Miss Plath's poetry does catch brilliantly--the moment poised on the edge of chaos." -- Christian Science Monitor
"Sylvia Plath was a luminous talent. . . one of the most interesting poets in American literature." -- New York Review of Books
"Movingly chronicled. . . . It's funny, intense, enormously human." -- Cosmopolitan
"The Bell Jar is regarded as a coming-of-age masterpiece . . . . Sylvia Plath has become of the influential writers of her time." -- Boston Globe