Staff Pick
This bookstore is like a fig tree. Wonderful worlds beckoning on every shelf like branches. Overwhelmed with indecision on which fig to choose? Don't let this prescient, timeless work dry up and go to waste... Recommended By Etan L., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
The Bell Jar is a classic of American literature, with over two million copies sold in this country. This extraordinary work chronicles the crackup of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful -- but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time. Step by careful step, Sylvia Plath takes us with Esther through a painful month in New York as a contest-winning junior editor on a magazine, her increasingly strained relationships with her mother, and with the boy she dated in college, and eventually, devastatingly, into the madness itself. The reader is drawn into her breakdown with such intensity that her 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 rare in any novel. It points to the fact that The Bell Jar is a largely autobiographical work about Plath's own summer of 1953, when she was a guest editor at Mademoiselle and went through a breakdown. It reveals so much about the sources of Sylvia Plath's own tragedy that its publication was considered a landmark in literature.
"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
This special 25th-anniversary edition includes a new foreword by Frances McCullough,who was the Harper & Row editor for the original edition, about the untold story of The Bell Jar's first American publication.
Review
Entertainment Weeklys Best YA Book of 2014 Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2014
TIME magazine Top YA of 2014
NPRs Book Concierge 2014 Great Reads List
Newsday 2014 Best Books for Young Readers
BookPage Best Childrens books of 2014
Bustle.com Top 25 YA Novels of 2014
School Library Journal Best Books of the Year
"Its been a long while since a book has pulled me in this way; I read it leaning forward, figuratively on the edge of my seat with my heart in my throat. I had no idea what was coming, but I was hungry to get there. So subtly plotted and painfully beautiful, I couldnt put it down. Meg Wolitzer is a an amazing storyteller.” —Jacqueline Woodson, winner of the National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming
"Wolitzer has imagined a world for young readers that celebrates the sacred, transcendent power of reading and writing." —The New York Times Book Review
“Expect depth and razor sharp wit in this YA novel from the author of The Interestings.” —Entertainment Weekly
“A prep school tale with a supernatural-romance touch, from genius adult novelist Meg Wolitzer.” —Glamour
“Basically everything Meg Wolitzer writes is worth reading, usually over and over again, and her YA debut…is no exception.” —TeenVogue.com
“Demonstrates the power of words to heal.” —The Washington Post
“A riveting exploration of the human psyche…Wolitzer's teenage characters are invigorated, flawed, emotionally real and intensely interesting. Even as readers fold back the layers of the story and discover unexpected truths and tragedies, the plot maintains an integrity that has come to be hallmark of Wolitzer's novels.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“A smart and engrossing tale of trauma, trust, and triumph.” —School Library Journal, starred review
"A strong, original book." —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Wolitzer handles Jams increasingly complex psychological state with delicate, nonjudgmental nuance …teen readers, especially rabid Plath fans, will relish Wolitzers deeply respectful treatment of Jams realistic emotional struggle.” —Booklist
“Enlivened by humor, memorable characters and a page-turning mystery only revealed in its final pages, Belzhar explores the role of trauma in young lives.” —BookPage
"But Jam herself is a fantastic portrait of a girl somehow younger than her own age, unable to cope with the hardships of being a teenager, and the final twist of the novel reveals an unexpected aspect to her character that makes her all the more heartbreaking." —The Daily Beast
Synopsis
A Special Hardcover Edition to Commemorate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Publication of Sylvia Plath's Remarkable Novel
Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanity
Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under--maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity 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.
Synopsis
A Special Hardcover Edition to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Publication of Sylvia Plath's Remarkable Novel
"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
Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanity
Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under--maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity 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.
Synopsis
The Bell Jar is a classic of American literature, with over two million copies sold in this country. This extraordinary work chronicles the crackup of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful -- but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time. Step by careful step, Sylvia Plath takes us with Esther through a painful month in New York as a contest-winning junior editor on a magazine, her increasingly strained relationships with her mother, and with the boy she dated in college, and eventually, devastatingly, into the madness itself. The reader is drawn into her breakdown with such intensity that her 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 rare in any novel. It points to the fact that The Bell Jar is a largely autobiographical work about Plath' s own summer of 1953, when she was a guest editor at Mademoiselle and went through a breakdown. It reveals so much about the sources of Sylvia Plath' s own tragedy that its publication was considered a landmark in literature.
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
This special 25th-anniversary edition includes a new foreword by Frances McCullough, who was the Harper & Row editor for the original edition, about the untold story of The Bell Jar' s first American publication.
Synopsis
A Special Hardcover Edition toCommemorate the Fiftieth Anniversaryof the Publication ofSylvia Plath's Remarkable Novel
Sylvia Plath 'ssh ocking , realisti c, andintensel y em oti onal novelabout a woman falling intothe grip of insanity
Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful,enormously talented, and successful,but slowly going under—maybefor the last time. In her acclaimed and enduringmasterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantlydraws the reader into Esther's breakdownwith such intensity that her insanity becomespalpably real, even rational—as accessible anexperience as going to the movies. A deeppenetration into the darkest and most harrowingcorners of the human psyche, The BellJar is an extraordinary accomplishment and ahaunting American classic.
Synopsis
Entertainment Weeklys Best YA Book of 2014 TIME magazine Top YA of 2014
"Wolitzer has imagined a world for young readers that celebrates the sacred, transcendent power of reading and writing." The New York Times Book Review
Theres a place where the lost go to be found.
If life were fair, Jam Gallahue would still be at home in New Jersey with her sweet British boyfriend, Reeve Maxfield. Shed be watching old comedy sketches with him. Shed be kissing him in the library stacks.
She certainly wouldnt be at The Wooden Barn, a therapeutic boarding school in rural Vermont, signed up for an exclusive, supposedly life-changing class called Special Topics in English that focusesonly and entirelyon the works of Sylvia Plath.
But life isnt fair. Reeve has been gone for almost a year and Jam is still mourning.
When a journal-writing assignment leads Jam into a mysterious other world she and her classmates call Belzhar, she discovers a realm where the untainted past is restored, and she can feel Reeves arms around her once again. But, as the pages of her journal begin to fill up, Jam must to confront hidden truths and ultimately decide what shes willing to sacrifice to reclaim her loss.
From New York Times bestselling author Meg Wolitzer comes a breathtaking and surprising story about first love, deep sorrow, and the power of acceptance.
About the Author
To this day, Sylvia Plath's writings continue to inspire and provoke. Her only published novel,
The Bell Jar, remains a classic of American literature, and
The Colossus(1960),
Ariel (1965),
Crossing the Water(1971),
Winter Trees(1971), and
The Collected Poems(1981) have placed her among this century's essential American poets.
Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932, the first child of Aurelia and Otto Plath. When Sylvia was eight years old, her father died--an event that would haunt her remaining years--and the family moved to the college town of Wellesley. By high school, Plath's talents were firmly established; in fact, her first published poem had appeared when she was eight. In 1950, she entered Smith College, where she excelled academically and continued to write; and in 1951 she won Mademoiselle magazine's fiction contest. Her experiences during the summer of 1953--as a guest editor at Mademoiselle in New York City and in deepening depression back home--provided the basis for The Bell Jar. Near that summer's end, Plath nearly succeeded in killing herself. After therapy and electroshock, however, she resumed her academic and literary endeavors. Plath graduated from Smith in 1955 and, as a Fulbright Scholar, entered Newnham College, in Cambridge, England, where she met the British poet, Ted Hughes. They were married a year later. After a two-year tenure on the Smith College faculty and a brief stint in Boston, Plath and Hughes returned to England, where their two children were born.
Plath had been successful in placing poems in several prestigious magazines, but suffered repeated rejection in her attempts to place a first book. The Colossus appeared in England, however, in the fall of 1960, and the publisher, William Heinemann, also bought her first novel. By June 1962, she had begun the poems that eventually appeared in Ariel. Later that year, separated from Hughes, Plath immersed herself in caring for her children, completing The Bell Jar, and writing poems at a breathtaking pace.
A few days before Christmas 1962, she moved with the children to a London flat. By the time The Bell Jarwas published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, in early 1963, she was in desperate circumstances. Her marriage was over, she and her children were ill, and the winter was the coldest in a century. Early on the morning of February 11, Plath turned on the cooking gas and killed herself.
Plath was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for her Collected Poems.