The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

 

Somehow managed to miss this so far, figured I'd read it while it was in the house. It's mostly a picaresque of sorts, there isn't anything like a conventional arc to it, and the main character comes across more a someone to whom things happen or are done than someone who does things. There are flickers of wit and humor, but not anything like so much as the foreword would lead one to believe, and the prose is laden with startling poetic turns of phrase. It is, I have no doubt, an honest novelistic memoir--it's such an obvious roman a clef that it wasn't supposed to be published while Sylvia Plath's mother was alive--but that doesn't really make it a good novel. It's a scream of agony and rage, and an effective one.