Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar

Here comes the gender perspective. If this book had been written by a man at the same time, there would have been nothing extraordinary about it; just a good novel. But the fact that it is written by a woman, from a female perspective, and at this time (1960s) makes it really interesting.
To my great pleasure, the writing and the phrases are immaculate. Many funny and granite statements to ponder and go “yeah, that was a good one”. There are no confusions, the prose is clear and liquid.
The story is of a girl who goes to New York to try to make it. Make it as a writer, but mainly just make it. Make her life. Make life into something that can be desired and held on to. But early on there is a slipping feeling to the main character, the adolescent drowning in a world that never sits still enough to be asked a question. Soon enough, there is too much to reach for and nothing to hold on to.
Memorable Quotes:

“There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.”
“She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist. ---
I said, ‘Isn’t it awful about the Rosenbergs?’
The Rosenbergs were to be executed late that night.
’Yes!’ Hilda said, and at last I felt I had touched a human string in that cat’s cradle of her heart. It was only as the two of us waited for the others in the tomb-like morning gloom of the conference room that Hilda amplified that Yes of hers.
‘It’s awful such people should be alive.’”
“With immense relief the salt tears and miserable noises that had been prowling around in me all morning burst out into the room.”
“My favourite tree was the Weeping Scholar Tree. I thought it must come from Japan. They understood things of the spirit in Japan.
They disembowelled themselves when anything went wrong.”