Under the glass bell

Self-irony and matter-of-factness as a way of survival. Enter a world of storytelling that reviewers have compared to Jack Kerouac and J. D. Salinger. Let yourself be carried away by the author's plastic depiction of America in the 1950s, by her descriptions of places, characters and moods that carry autobiographical elements. It's 1953 and Esther Greenwood is a twenty-year-old literature student who has won a competition run by a renowned magazine, at whose invitation she is spending a month as an intern in New York. She should be having the best summer of her life, but somehow she can't. Feelings of existential sadness and loss of meaning are compounded when she returns home to Boston, and when the once-successful student is unable to even change her clothes, she must be hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital. However, the story is not so much about the plot itself, but about the rhythm of the narrative, which reviewers have compared to Jack Kerouac and J. D. Salinger. Enter the author's world and let yourself be carried away by the plastic make-up of 1950s America, from New York cabs and ladies in hats and gloves to a Boston mental hospital with electroshock. The story bears many of the autobiographical features of author Sylvia Plath, and in addition to descriptions of places, characters and moods, it also includes a sad account of the status of women in America at the time.