Summary: Esther Greenwood is working as an intern for a fashion magazine in New York. It’s 1953. Her day-to-day routine involves writing magazine pieces, doing research, and mostly attending various fashion events and getting free drinks. It’s darkly funny. There’s no Devil Wears Prada character but the first part of the novel has that energy. The second half is more Girl, Interrupted. Esther’s internship ends and she returns to her sleepy little town. The Bell Jar was published in 1963 so in many ways the second half of the novel is a horrifying look at how mental health was treated. And it’s a sad read when you see what Esther goes through, and also know that Plath committed suicide weeks after the publication of this novel.

There were twelve of us at the hotel.

We had all won a fashion magazine contest, by writing essays and stories and poems and fashion blurbs, and as prizes they gave us jobs in New York for a month, expenses paid, and piles and piles of free bonuses, like ballet tickets and passes to fashion shows and hair stylings at a famous expensive salon and chances to meet successful people in the field of our desire and advice about what to do with our particular complexions.

I still have the make-up kit they gave me.

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I enjoyed this book a lot. It’s a novel that captures a distinct time. Very Mad Men, 1950s society and culture. And yet so many things remain the same. This is Sylvia Plath’s only novel so it’s worth the read.