Buddy Reading The Bell Jar
Buddy Reading The Bell Jar
Kicking off the buddy reads with fig trees and fashion magazines.
The Instagram poll has spoken and so we’re reading Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar for our first buddy read. (Don’t worry, contra-voters, Angela Carter is coming next!)
First published just weeks before her death in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas (in the UK - it wasn’t published in the US until 1971), The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath’s only published novel.
Nineteen-year-old Esther Greenwood is in New York for the summer, after winning a prestigious internship at a magazine. Her experiences over the summer aren’t what she hopes for, and when she returns home to Massachusetts, her mental health takes a further downturn. After a suicide attempt which mirrors Plath’s own, Esther is admitted into a psychiatric hospital, and, eventually, she starts to get better.
The buddy reads are for everyone to join in on, but if you’re considering a subscription, you’ll gain access to writing prompts and community posts, plus discounts on our courses and workshops. This Substack is reader-supported, and paid subscriptions mean I can do more of it!
Grab yourself a copy of the book and join us over the next four weeks as we work our way through the novel. Discussion posts will be here on Substack each Friday, with links for you to read, watch, or listen to at your own pace, and comments will be open for discussion on the sections as we read through them. We’ll kick off discussions on Friday 24th May, so everyone has time to read the first few chapters.
Schedule:
Friday 24 May — chapters 1-5
Friday 31 May — chapters 6-10
Friday 7 June — chapters 11-15
Friday 14 June — chapters 16-20
See you on the 24th!!
Content warnings: depression, suicide, mental health treatments, sexual assault, racism, homophobia.
