The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath #1

I have to say, I really enjoyed this novel. Esther was a very memorable character, and even in the beginning I was compelled to keep reading. It starts out kid of slow, but it gets better fast. It's about Esther, a girl who goes to New York for a month, and her spiral into a breakdown. Throughout the novel she gets crazier and crazier, but from the very beginning you can see that she isn't completely there. The way she thinks about things makes you realize that something isn't right with her, even from the start. She leaves her friend, who is obviously not well because she vomits on the floor, outside her room in the hotel. She just leaves here there in the hallway, doesn't even let her in to sleep on the floor even. I'm pretty sure any normal person would have let her in, given the condition she was in (and even if you were annoyed), but Esther just leaves her to fend for herself. I think that was my first indication something wasn't right with her. Throughout the novel Esther tries killing herself a number of times, and they are very frail attempts at first. She is too scared to cut her wrist, so she cuts her leg. She tries to drown herself, but she floats back up. Then finally she decides she's had enough... She gets a bottle of pills, leaves her mother a note saying she's going for a walk, then she goes down to the cellar and tries to overdose. To her dismay, she's found and brought to the hospital and is admitted to an asylum shortly after.
I also really liked this novel because it reminded me of a book we studied in high school, Catcher in the Rye. She reminded me a lot of Holden Caulfield at certain points, and they do have a number of similarities. They both look normal on the outside, and try to act normal, but their actions and thoughts depict something far from normal. Even if Esther was crazy, she was a very memorable character and I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.