The Bell Jar

Fiction from time to time has an autobiographical influence on it. Some examples include Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, but the most prolific example is Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.

Esther Greenwood shows promise for her future. She won a scholarship to a prestigious college, she gets good grades and she has a skill for writing. But there's something inside Esther that may change all that...

Just from the summary you can tell it's a thinly veiled autobiography of Plath. Esther's slow descent into madness mirrors what happened to Plath. It's also one of the realistic and horrifying things I've read. Plath's dark descriptions throughout make The Bell Jar what it is: a haunting classic on the darkness of the human soul.

My Rating: *****