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The Bell Jar

by Sylvia Plath

Narrator Maggie Gyllenhaal

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Length 7 hours 24 minutes

Language English

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Summary
About the author
About the narrator

A realistic and emotional look at a woman who falls into the grips of insanity written by the iconic American writer Sylvia Plath

“It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath’s voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal.” — USA Today

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that Esther’s neuroses become completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

Classics Fiction

Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. Her books include the poetry collections The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, Ariel, and Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. A complete and uncut facsimile edition of Ariel was published in 2004 with her original selection and arrangement of poems. She was married to the poet Ted Hughes, with whom she had a daughter, Frieda, and a son, Nicholas. She died in London in 1963.

Maggie Gyllenhaal's stunning performance in the film Secretary garnered her a Golden Globe nomination, an Independent Spirit Award nomination and awards from the Chicago Film Critics Association, the Boston Society of Film Critics, and the National Board of Review. She recently appeared in the Oscar-nominated film Adaptation and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.