The Bell Jar, a classic coming of age novel, was a recent read for Jenn here.
What can I say? I was pretty surprised.
Not pleasantly, though.
I was pretty excited when I started reading this- oh boy, insanity and suicide!
Not really. But I was still excited. However, in the end, I had some mixed feelings about this novel.
While The Bell Jar had an amazing voice (in writing terms, of course. No, it just started talking out loud- yeah, that’s what happened) and amazing characters and metaphors, I just… didn’t feel that extra something, the special something that appears in some other books that I love.
It was a good book, but I’ll start with the cons so this review finishes on a good note.
It was immensely confusing. Sylvia Plath put a little bit too many flashbacks in there, making the reader (aka moi) confused as to whether things were happening just then. A present tense narrative could’ve helped, but I don’t think that it would have captured Esther’s struggle as well.
It was a bit slow for my taste. It never seemed to really get any further, while it actually did. But I found it hard to get through, like I was a tomato and trying to get through Jell-O.
That’s right.
Tomatoes are inanimate.
Sex always bothers me. Sure, I can have a non-awkward conversation about the topic-
HAH.
Who am I kidding?
Sex is NOT the easiest subject to write about or read about, and yet authors back then used it ever so lightly. Life isn’t like this, authors:
Person 1: Hey, I had sex last night.
Person 2: So did I!
Person 1: What a small world.
Okay. That’s a really bad example. I don’t even think that’s a bad example. It’s more like a bad roleplay. Like It’s a Small World meets Jersey Shore. *shudders*
It’s a seriously recurring theme in adult and young adult (seriously, aren’t they called young adult for a reason? Does every other teenager go out and have sex on Friday nights or is that just in books and TV shows?)
It’s disgusting, dirty, and cliché. Can’t we just have one book without sex? Look at Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and Hunger Games, teaching abstinence everywhere. When Harry was having that urge, he just talked about Ginny’s nice skin and hair, no problem!
Anyways, the Bell Jar did not make me very happy in the area of coverage. And just when I started to have hope- the first adult book I had ever read without sex! Oh, boy oh boy!
Okay, now onto the good things.
Sylvia Plath put some amazing metaphors in this. The fig tree, the bell jar- and they all fit perfectly, unlike jeans I try on. Curse you for not taking short people into account. -.- anyways, this was also part of Sylvia Plath amazingly epicsauce writing style, which was so... I don't know. Lyrical? Flowing? Puncturing? It doesn't matter, but just the way Plath wrote was beautiful in its own way. So kudos to you.
Would I recommend this book?
Certainly.
Would I skip over the sex parts?
Um… YES.
So go on, rip those pages out and read, my friend!
My rating: 4 stars
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