Finally I finished a book in two days flat (I know its still a lot) but considering how much my reading pace had slowed down it was quiet a feat.
This is the only novel written by Sylvia Plath who is known more for her love sonnets and poems and is a semi-autobiographical account of her slip into depression and was published only a few weeks before her suicide. It starts out with the protagonist Esther Greenwood, apprenticing with a magazine in New York away from her small town of Boston and living the high life, going to parties, shopping, doing writing, fine dining and the works and is a delight to read till Esther after her month at New York moves back home, only to be rejected for a writing course. The whole idea of having to spend more than a week at home, doing nothing and also not knowing what she wanted from life in spite having had an impeccable academic record, makes her slip into depression and she continuously keeps thinking of ways to commit suicide. In all of this she becomes insomniac, is not able to read or write, the two things she loved doing and really sees no point in the very existence of human life if it has to die and wither away. It is a downward spiral from there on, but by the end of it she does survive the ordeal unlike in Sylvia's real life.
The narration is extremely lucid, and therefore the description of her depression and her suicide attempts and stay at the asylum are so vivid. It's a genius' struggle to deal with the triteness of everyday life, of dealing with male attention and dealing with inadequacies while one see everybody else leading a normal life. What really makes you connect is that you see somebody like Plath facing the same issues like an everyday normal woman, the same dilemmas, confusions and questions from oneself. The reference to Bell jar, is the stifling feeling one gets when one is covered with it and also to the pickling babies, Esther sees at the hospital. All in all book I loved reading and would love to go over it again.
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