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Summary: A fascinating read!
Review: I absolutely loved this book and also enjoyed Plath's last collection of poems, Ariel.
The book is extremely hunting for it blurs the line between fiction and reality to a point where you wonder if it was just persuasive writing or yourself is ultimately suicidal. It takes you onto a journey from broad daylight to the dreary hours and the shocking finality. It brings out the truthful dark side out of everyone.
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Summary: It's a classic
Review: Edited to say: Sylvia Plath had a way with darkness and danger that no other poet has touched in the last decade. To heck with me if I didn't see than when I was 15.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring
Review: Dull, boring, & overrated. Why are so many reviewers in love with this book? Is it because the author killed herself in real life? It certainly can't be the quality of the writing or story. Imagine if you wrote a book about your day to day life, getting up in the morning, including your thoughts on breakfast, your discussions with neighbors, ... etc. Boring right? To me this book was just that, a mundane description of a mundane life.
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Summary: A cry for Plath's tears.
Review: Sylvia Plath simply wrote of her life. The tribulations and upheavels we survive and the depression and anxiety we deal with. This book was one of the best books i personally have ever read. I too am bipolar, and enjoy reading a historical look at one of the worlds most talented writers of all time, and how she coped w/ her depressions. How life seemed to her, how she wrote, how she lived. In vivid and bold motion she wrote imagery like never i have seen before. Almost making things so unbelievable and intriguing that they were too realistic. Her philosophys are trying and dark, but the opposite of sides brings light to the opposition. I personally loved this book.
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Summary: Sylvia Plath at her Best
Review: Before reading "The Bell Jar," I read "Ariel," Plath's collection of poems that really address the climax of her depression with such great poems like "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus." But it was only after I read "The Bell Jar," that I truly appreciated Plath's genius and sophistication as a writer. One of the reasons Plath was such a genius was her command of the English language. "The Bell Jar" does not read like a novel, but more like prose, which made the book a quick read. "The Bell Jar" tells the story of Ester Greenwood, a young woman interning at a woman's magazine in New York City. The reader fully witnesses Ester's decent into depression and her institutionalization in a mental hospital. Like her poetry, "The Bell Jar" is semi - autobiographical and very emotional. Plath also leaves the ending of the novel ambiguous, I do not want to give the ending away but I will say this, do not expect any sort of resolution. All in all, I would recommend this book to Plath fans and those who appreciate a clever, wonderfully written piece of literature.
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Summary: No one is perfect
Review: The bell jar is one of the few, acually the only book I've ever been able to read more than once. Sylvia Plaths writing style is exceptional. The eerieness of reading about a person who is basicly perfect, turning into suicidal chemicly imbalanced loony bin drew me in completly. Though it is not clear when Ester Greenwood really looses it the path she takes is very interesting . My only wish is that Sylvia Plath had lived to write another masterpiece like the Bell Jar.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: This book, though written in the 60's, echoes today's world. As the character starts to fall apart, your reading will become faster and faster. Partly autobiographical, Plath wrote about her falling mental status and what she went through to get out. Anyone with mental illness will fully understand this book, and loved ones should read to get some understanding of how widespread a disease this is.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Read
Review: This book is interesting and well-written. It's definitely worth purchasing and adding to your collection.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting. Beautiful.
Review: A small insight into Sylvia Plath's amazing mind, this novel charts the path into psychosis for a young women. Touching, sad, interesting. This is a great book for anyone interested in the human spirit.
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Summary: I felt very still and very empty...
Review: Plath's only novel was published under a pseudonym less than a month before her suicide in her London flat. It's a thinly-disguised self-portrait, with virtually every person Plath knew when she was nineteen presented as a scathing caricature. The early chapters are the best: Esther Greenwood's account of her New York trip, which should have been the best time of her life, but wasn't, could almost be a novel on its own. Her description of how she deliberately broke her leg on a skiing trip to get back at her egotistical, phony boyfriend is also memorable. Obviously modelled after Salinger's Catcher In The Rye, it's not really on the level of that masterpiece, but Plath's wry, deadpan tone is well-suited to her increasing alienation from everyone around her, and finally, chillingly, from herself. Esther's slow descent into madness is recorded with detachment and understanding, because, after all, Plath had been there, and she was getting ready to return.
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