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Title: Madness and Brilliance
Review: The Bell Jar is a stark narrative about depression, and the power it has to completely immobilize protagonist Esther Greenwood and throw her into insanity. The Bell Jar's prose is easy to read, and yet Sylvia Plath's writing style is highly sophisticated and exact, which is startling considering the nearness of her own suicide. Esther Greenwood begins an ambitious and talented young writer, working for a beauty magazine in New York, and attending college on a full scholarship. Her sorrow and madness begin to surface, and she soon finds herself trapped in a revolving door of mental asylums. The interesting thing here is way the story is told; unflinchingly and without remorse. I could hear Plath's cold, spare, incisive voice behind that of Miss Greenwood - hurting and ready to die. The Bell Jar can be read as a fierce indictment on depression. It is a brilliant, haunting, frightening work, and it held my interest intensely the whole way through.
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