I last read The Bell Jar in February 1980.  I know that because the date is penciled into the faded, yellowed paperback I picked from my bookshelves recently.  I’m not sure why I chose to re-read it now.  It may be because Sylvia Plath has been on my mind recently.  I’m reading and enjoying Jonathan Bate’s biography of her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, in which she features prominently.  (More about that another time).  Or perhaps it was because I realized I couldn’t remember a single thing about a novel that is supposed to be harrowing and unforgettable.  Thirty-six years since my first encounter seemed like as good a time as any to re-engage with it.

Several things surprised me.  I had forgotten the dominant tone – the controlled, but intense bitterness – and how extraordinarily angry a book it is, considering how young Plath was at the time. (She was only 30 years old when it was first published under a pseudonym in 1963). It strikes me now, though it didn’t in 1980, as the work of a very young writer.  I closed the novel for the last time feeling impressed and disappointed at the same time.  There is some wonderful and very unsettling writing in it and beautiful, startling imagery, but it also feels rushed, like something the author needed to excrete urgently.  Her true voice – frenzied and cynical – found its perfect expression in the late poems.  The Bell Jar feels like a dry run, someone testing how their final, prolonged scream might sound.