Bell Jar (Plath) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews 
Esther Greenwood's account of her years in the bell jar is as clear and readable as it is witty and disturbing - [this] is not a potboiler, nor a series of ungrateful caricatures; it is literature.
New York Times Book Review


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


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


An enchanting book. The author wears her scholarship with grace, and the amazing story she has to tell is recounted with humor and understanding.
Atlantic Monthly


The narrator simply describes herself as feeling very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel. The in-between moment is just what Miss Plath's poetry does catch brilliantly—the moment poised on the edge of chaos.
Christian Science Monitor


The first-person narrative fixes us there, in the doctor's office, in the asylum, in the madness, with no reassuring vacations when we can keep company with the sane and listen to their lectures.
Book World