The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
I finished this today! Overall I thought it was good but sometimes felt like it could've been longer or there could have been more information about how Esther felt, to help me connect to her. It sometimes felt like she was just recounting experiences without really articulating the effects those experiences had on her. Now that I think about it though, this may be because she was having difficult connecting to her own experiences due to her mental illness, so the somewhat detached tone of the book is perhaps meant to be representative of the character's mental state.
I didn't really care about any of the other characters besides Esther. Maybe Doreen felt like the most interesting and fully-realized character and I liked when she was around. I would have liked to know more about Joan but we don't actually get much time with her ||before her own suicide.
Since this book is semi-autobiographical to Plath's life, she seems to have recounted her own experiences in the asylum and with various psychiatrists. A number of the things she undergoes, like insulin injections and ECT, are thankfully no longer in practice, but this book stands as a reminder of the advancements that we've made to mental health treatment, and why it's necessary to continue to work to understand what causes mental illness and how it might safely and ethically be treated.
For other media products I've consumed, books like My Year of Rest and Relaxation or TV like Bojack Horseman, they often show specific originating trauma. While Esther talks about the death of her father, it's not treated at the starting point or the cause, and the novel gives more attention to her insecurities in doubts. For me, I relate to that more, that mental health struggles don't necessarily have a clear cause, and I find that to be a more nuanced portrayal. But overall I find the book feels modern, so I wouldn't say it's otherwise different from more recent works.
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