The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

 

From Goodreads

A vulnerable young girl wins a dream assignment on a big-time New York fashion magazine and finds herself plunged into a nightmare. An autobiographical account of Sylvia Plath's own mental breakdown and suicide attempt, The Bell Jar is more than a confessional novel, it is a comic but painful statement of what happens to a woman's aspirations in a society that refuses to take them seriously... a society that expects electroshock to cure the despair of a sensitive, questioning young artist whose search for identity becomes a terrifying descent toward madness.

"A fine novel, as bitter and remorseless as her last poems -- the kind of book Salinger's Fanny might have written about herself ten years later, if she had spent those ten years in Hell." -- Robert Scholes, The New York Times Book Review.

"By turns funny, harrowing, crude, ardent and artless. Its most notable quality is an astonishing immediacy, like a series of snapshots taken at high noon." -- Time.

"A special poignance... a special force, a humbling power, because it shows the vulnerability of people of hope and good will." -- Newsweek.

My thoughts

This was a recent read of my local Library Reading group.  To be honest it's not a book that ever jumped out at me and if it had not been on the list of books to read, then I doubt I would ever have read it.  Saying that though in some ways I am glad that I read it.

The book is semi autobiographical in nature and outlines the struggles that people had in the past trying to get treatment and understanding to help with mental illness.  Many people in the past were mistreated and it was thought that electric shock treatment would help, in my opinion this probably worsened problems that people were suffering with,  

I could relate to the main character to some extent as in the past I have had some issue with depression due to  various causes (which I won't bore you with).  I was prescribed medication, bit  in my case these made things worse and I managed to work through my issues.

Most of my book group didn't rate it and I found it an above average read.