The Bell Jar

The title of this iconic novel by the poet Sylvia Plath, who ultimately died a suicide, refers to the claustrophic depression that overcomes her protagonist, Esther Greenwood, one summer during her college years. Maggie Gyllenhaal must create the voice of a young woman who feels utterly cut off from the colors and warmth of the world, imprisoned under a glass dome, but somehow connect with the reader while doing it. She pulls it off beautifully, giving Esther a sympathetic quality that the reader can feel, even when Esther cannot. Plath thought of this book as a potboiler, but it is better than that, full of acute observation and sorry truth, especially in this fine version. B.G. 2004 Audie Award Finalist (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

The only novel by troubled American poet Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar tells of a young woman's descent into madness and her emergence back to reality. It is frank, witty, earthy, scatological, yet remarkably poetic. Also autobiographical. The author ended her own life a month after the book's publication. Perhaps a bit angrier and certainly more mature than the first-person narrator, Frances McDormand, nonetheless, gives a fine, intermittently inspired reading--sensitive to both the author's language and the protagonist's inner life. However, the sound quality leaves much to be desired, and numerous technical glitches mar an otherwise superb performance. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine