Ciska's Book Chest

The authorSylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. Along with Anne Sexton, Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry initiated by Robert Lowell and W.D. Snodgrass. Despite her remarkable artistic, academic, and social success at Smith, Plath suffered from severe depression and underwent a period of psychiatric hospitalization. She graduated from Smith with highest honours in 1955 and went on to Newnham College, Cambridge, in England, on a Fulbright fellowship. Here she met and married the English poet Ted Hughes in 1956. For the following two years she was an instructor in English at Smith College.In 1960, shortly after Plath and Hughes returned to England from America, her first collection of poems appeared as The Colossus. She also gave birth to a daughter, Frieda Rebecca Hughes’ and Plath’s son, Nicholas Farrar, was born in 1962.Plath took her own life on the morning of February 11, 1963. Leaving out bread and milk, she completely sealed the rooms between herself and her sleeping children with "wet towels and cloths." Plath then placed her head in the oven while the gas was turned on.The synopsisWe follow Esther Greenwood's personal life from her summer job in New York with Ladies' Day magazine, back through her days at New England's largest school for women, and forward through her attempted suicide, her bad treatment at one asylum and her good treatment at another, to her final re-entry into the world like a used tyre: "patched, retreaded, and approved for the road" ... Esther Greenwood's account of her year in the bell jar is as clear and readable as it is witty and disturbing. The reviewI have started to write several reviews on this book, but it is difficult to bring to words what I feel. This book should come with a medical warning, If you experience feelings like the person in this book please contact your doctor. This book gave me the feeling it allows people who are having a hard time coping with life changes to consider suicide while it was not made clear enough that the protagonist was suffering from a serious major depressive disorder. I hope that knowing that this book is semi-autobiographical and the tragic death of Sylvia Plath is enough of a warning and that people considering reading this book take that in account. Further I found the writing style disturbing. At times I had a hard time following up with the time-line. It jumped weird at points. Because of this I cannot give this book more stars or say that it is good cause I have been annoyed by it from the first page.