Belzhar by Meg WolitzerBook Review

Hi everyone, today I'm here to do a
review of Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer. If you follow my channel you'll know that
last month i read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath for the first time, and I really
enjoyed it. It's just a classic i have never gotten too and i decided to listen
to the audio book which is narrated by maggie gyllenhaal and i highly recommend
it. But this isn't a review of the bell jar, it is a review of Belzhar which is
heavily inspired by and sort of plays off of Plath's novel.

This book follows a girl
named Jame, which is short for jamaica, and she is sent to new school where students
all have some sort of past trauma or issues that they're dealing with. Jam
recently has lost the first love of her life. He's died, and that's not a spoiler. It's
in the first sentence on the back of the book.

And jam is dealing with these
issues. She's feeling very isolated and separate from the world, and on her first
day at this new boarding school she finds out that she's been selected for a
very prestigious course called "special topics in English," which is only taught
whenever the professor wants to teach it. It is a class with only four other
students, and for the semester--which is the professor's final time teaching this
class ever-- they're going to be reading and studying
Sylvia Plath's work. So the book sort of blends the ideas and themes explored in
Plath's work with this sort of modern story.

And I really enjoyed it for that. I
thought that if you hadn't read The Bell Jar it still stands alone really well,
but if you have read it then this is elevated a little bit because you can kind of
compare Jam's story to Esther in Sylvia Plath's novel. The story just has a really
great group of people in it. I've read one other book by Meg
Wolitzer which is The Interestings, and i absolutely love it because she's so good
at creating rich and vivid characters.

This isn't as developed as much as The
Interestings in my opinion, but she's still really good at creating dynamics,
relationships that are meaningful, really portraying characters --in my opinion-- a
realistic way. The way that these teenagers, because they are mostly 16 to 17,
talk to one another is very realistic. The issues that are going through are
diverse. The people that she brings into the story and the different ways of life
that she represents are very diverse.

There are types of characters i had
never really read about in fiction-- young adult or adult-- for that matter. There are some stories
that I think anyone can relate to regardless of your experiences because
of the way that she writes them. Just because you can't necessarily relate to
the specific trauma that one of the students goes through, i think the way
that she writes their story and allows them to tell their stories is really
beautiful and relatable. So generally the plot of the story
follows Jam in her first semester at this new school, in this course that is
very intensive, and through the experiences that she's having making
friends with these other students and sort of them all dealing with their
grief trauma and the pains that come from those life experiences.

And I won't
say much more because the book sort of unravels and reveals itself slowly as
you get farther into it in a really interesting way. And it's fun to
experience that on your own. But i will say the unexpected elements in the story
really fascinated me and I enjoyed that. The only thing I really have against
this book is it is short.

It could have used a little more
development. The characters are great and I really thought they were developed
well, but I think she could have pushed it a little more. I also think that
because we only get to see everything through Jam's perspective, when the other
students are telling their stories to her there is a sort of distance. And I
wish we could have really gotten into the minds of each character like we do
with Jam.

But other than that I really enjoyed this book. It is a fast read. I
think it's a great companion piece to the bell jar. And if you've not read that
book i would highly recommend reading it and then reading this one, seeing how you
feel about them and comparing the two.

Because they do do interesting things in
similar ways but i think they come to sort of different resolutions and I
enjoyed that as well because it allowed me to compare my experience and my
feelings after finishing each one to each other and kind of getting more out
of it. I think that Meg Wolitzer isn't just trying to play fanservice to the bell
jar; she's trying to take maybe what she experienced while reading that book and
reinvent it, and i like that. But it still does give a lot of credit to the bell
jar and I thought that was a cool experience. I don't think i've read a
book that was so heavily inspired by another one --that i can think of off the
top of my head-- even so close as to have the name of the
book be very similar and the font is very similar to the original font on the
bell jar.

That's my review of Belzhar. If you read
this book and the bell jar let me know what you think about the two, how you compare them. I mean you can't compare them directly to each other because one is a classic and
this is pretty new, but i think that they play well with one another and I'd be
interested to hear your thoughts. So i hope you guys enjoyed this review.

And i
will see you in my next video. Bye..