The Bell Jar cover art

The Bell Jar

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Bell Jar

By: Sylvia Plath
Narrated by: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £13.31

Buy Now for £13.31

About this listen

 READ BY THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED ACTRESS MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL

'A modern classic.' Guardian

'A near-perfect work of art.' Joyce Carol Oates

I was supposed to be having the time of my life . . .

Working as an intern for a New York fashion magazine in the summer of 1953, Esther Greenwood is on the brink of her future. Yet she is also on the edge of a darkness that makes her world increasingly unreal. Esther's vision of the world shimmers and shifts: day-to-day living in the sultry city, her crazed men-friends, the hot dinner dances . . . The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath's only novel, is partially based on Plath's own life. It has been celebrated for its darkly funny and razor sharp portrait of 1950s society, and has sold millions of copies worldwide.

ONE OF THE BBC'S '100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD'

'As clear and readable as it is witty and disturbing.' New York Times Book Review

©2015 Sylvia Plath (P)2015 Faber & Faber Classics Fiction Mental Health Awareness Women's Voices Heartfelt Thought-Provoking Witty Emotionally Gripping Mental Health
All stars
Most relevant
This is Canongate's fitting tribute to Sylvia Plath: a sophisticated production of her classic and only novel published in UK in 1963, a month before she gassed herself. This inescapable historical fact inhabits everyone's reading of the novel for the last fifty years and gives the story a haunting and shocking power. The difference between fact and fiction is that Esther Greenwood - who seems to have it all going for her but slides into terrifying mental illness - survives to tackle the rest of her life, whereas Sylvia Plath did not. Despite the best attempts of her long-suffering mother, Esther, feeling trapped under her 'bell jar', disintegrates into attempted suicide and incarceration with electro shock therapy, all detailed in visceral language. The conclusion, however, is positive.
Plath's language is a joy, even if her experiences are not. A self-mocking wry humour saves the listening experience from being merely depressing, and her quirky metaphors and similes jump out. The blood - and there's a lot of blood in The Bell Jar - is 'gathering like fruit' from Esther's self-inflicted cut, but most striking is the image of the fig tree which Esther imagines laden with fruit, each fig representing a possible future for her: a husband, happy home and children; a brilliant professor; an amazing editor... But she sits starving in the tree because she can only have one and as she can't decide which one to take, they wrinkled and blackened and 'plopped to the ground'.
The narration by New York actress Maggie Gyllenhaal is brilliant. She makes Esther talk directly to the listener conveying the whole heady mix of her qualities: her idiosyncrasies and insights, her ambitions, frustrations, energy, humour - and all her blinding frailties.

'Malaise like molasses'

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Maggie Gyllenhaal's wonderful voice is an absolute pleasure to listen to. The story itself is difficult to hear at times but it is a testament to Sylvia Plath's writing that you live through every moment with the main character in raw detail.

Beautifully written and narrated

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Where does The Bell Jar rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Somewhere above the middle. Sylvia Plath has a wonderful eye for detail. Her prose is beautiful, often poetic making the book worth reading just to enjoy her writing.

What other book might you compare The Bell Jar to, and why?

'The Danish Girl' by David Ebershoff for a story about a person's struggle with life. In terms of prose, Hilary Mantel and Ian McEwan to mention just two other great writers.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Not really. The first half of the book was excellent, but it did deteriorate towards the end due to a lack of plot and Esther Greenwood is not an especially sympathetic character. I would describe her as narcissistic and spiteful.

A calm, rational portrayal of depression

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The perfect choice for narrator, I really felt Maggies voice made this book even more beautiful, the way, her voice curls around each sentence is mesmerising.. A heartfelt and heartbreaking story, so poetically written, witty, dark, and funny, and well ahead of its time in terms of feminism and understanding of the patriarchy, and even symptoms of depression, although sometimes she writes as if she doesn't know what she is experiencing is depression.. As someone who has long suffered with this, it felt very validating to hear an almost innocent, unknowing, niave telling of depressive symptoms, and how it can manifest, and how deeply it affects you especially at the start when you aren't really sure what's 'wrong'. Would highly recommend, I can't believe I've not read this before, will definitely be listening to plenty more times too.

Simply beautiful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This story is timeless and well known for being phenomenal. This particular narrator really made the audio experience of the story for me. She narrates the story just as my mind read it at the beginning of my 20’s.
I thoroughly recommended this audio version.

Perfectly narrated

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews