Belzhar

by Meg Wolitzer

“Expect depth and razor sharp wit in this YA novel from the author of The Interestings.” – Entertainment Weekly

“A prep school tale with a supernatural-romance touch, from genius adult novelist Meg Wolitzer.” —Glamour
 
“Basically everything Meg Wolitzer writes is worth reading, usually over and over again, and her YA debut . . . is no exception.” —TeenVogue.com

If life were fair, Jam Gallahue would still be at home in New Jersey with her sweet British boyfriend, Reeve Maxfield. She’d be watching old comedy sketches with him. She’d be kissing him in the library stacks. She certainly wouldn’t be at The Wooden Barn, a therapeutic boarding school in rural Vermont, living with a weird roommate, and signed up for an exclusive, mysterious class called Special Topics in English.But life isn’t fair, and Reeve Maxfield is dead. Until a journal-writing assignment leads Jam to Belzhar, where the untainted past is restored, and Jam can feel Reeve’s arms around her once again. But there are hidden truths on Jam’s path to reclaim her loss. 
 

• ISBN10: 0142426296
• ISBN13: 9780142426296
• Publish Date: 29 September 2015 (first published 30 September 2014)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Dutton Books for Young Readers
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 272
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780142426296

Reviews

[Sam@WLABB]

Rating: 4.5 Stars

I fell in love with Wolitzer's storytelling with The Interestings, and once again, she captivated me with this story of loss and healing. I really appreciated the diversity of the characters and of their "issues". I loved that she explored this idea that your pain, your suffering is yours and should not be compared to someone else's or made to be "less than". I liked the mystical part, and was quite happy with what I would call "extras" that Wolitzer added. They made me happy.

[Joséphine]

May 4, 2015

Book review is up on Word Revel.


April 10, 2015

Initial thoughts: I feel cheated. Belzhar was one of my highly anticipated 2014 books and now it has been reduced to this — a 2-star read. I hate it when books manipulate readers with plot twists that eventually fall flat. The magical aspect of its magical realism didn't enamour me either.

What Belzhar did have going for it at least was the no-nonsense style of writing. It was straight to the point. Still, this book ended up being slow reading because the plot was presented in a rather boring manner. It was a plain regurgitation of all the characters' stories that didn't allow me to experience anything as a reader.

I believe books should reach out to readers on both an emotional and an intellectual level. Belzhar was surprisingly devoid of emotion for a book that revolved around 5 teenagers who supposedly went through traumatic experiences.

[girlinthepages]

Actual Rating: 2.5 Stars

I was really interested in reading Belzhar the minute I found out it was loosely based on The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Like many avid readers, Sylvia Plath was a very important poet and writer to me growing up, ever since my ninth grade English teacher recommended her to me when I was struggling to find a poet I connected with for a poetry project. Since then, Sylvia Plath’s poetry, with its rawness and bare open exposure of pain and the struggle of finding one’s identity (especially as a female) resonated with me deeply in a way that no other poet’s work ever could. So when Belzhar came along, I was entranced with the idea that Plath’s work would find its way among YA literature.

Unfortunately, Belzhar turned out to be a parody of the brilliance and darkness of Sylvia Plath’s work in many ways. While the plot was intriguing enough to keep me reading to the end and the writing style wasn’t necessarily bad, by the end of the novel had me thoroughly disappointed in the use of Plath as inspiration, and the lack of depth in the characters.

Where Belzhar Excelled:

It’s always my policy in my reviews to give credit where credit’s due, and there were elements in Belzhar that kept my attention. The Wooden Barn, the school for emotionally fragile and highly intellectual teens that Jam ends up attending, was an interesting setting, and I immediately adored the Special Topics in English class with their no-nonsense teacher who refuses to coddle them because of their backgrounds. Mrs. Quenell is the type of teacher who’s class can change a student’s life (even without the magical realism aspect…and do note that while this may be billed firstly as a contemporary, there is a heavy layer of magical realism/fantasy. Had I not known this going in I may have been even more frustrated with the book). Mrs. Quenell really drives home that books can change a student’s life and help them uncover more about themselves, and reminded me of the personal importance so many discussions I had with classmates and professors impacted me. There’s also a really neat twist with Mrs. Quenell’s background toward the end, although for the most part she remains an enigma, which was disappointing as the beginning of the novel built up her character so much. Mrs. Q really drives home an important point: words matter, even in a world where technology rules and S.T.E.M. fields are being pushed over the liberal arts.

Belzhar also kept me hooked as I wanted to know the back stories of why Jam’s classmates ended up at the special school. I appreciated the range of stories, from tragic abductions to the implosion of families, that caused realistic emotional trauma for Jam’s classmates, and how they all struggled to overcome them, and quite frankly wished I could have spent more time with them rather than the protagonist herself.

Where Belzhar Disappointed:

Belzhar didn’t incorporate Sylvia Plath nearly as much as I had hoped. There are only a handful of instances where it shows the characters interacting with her poetry in class, and most of time I had hoped would show the Special Topics in English class sessions was substituted with the students obsessions with their journals (which you’ll find out about if you read the novel…I don’t want to spoil anything).

My main problems with this novel were not with the plot or the setting or even the characters, but mainly with the protagonist, Jam. She is dealing with the loss of Reeve, her boyfriend she knew for 41 days before the loss (an excessively short time, I know). Now I don’t want to undermine Jam’s loss, because I know how devastating love and loss can be at the age of fifteen, when you’re still trying to figure out who you are and where you fit in the shark tank of high school and how much your own identity can and should mesh with someone else. So on the one hand I don’t want to completely condemn Jam for her depression…but on the other hand I just wanted to grab her, shake her shoulders and be like “You only knew this kid for 41 days.” 41 days and she’s fallen into a practically comatose state, unable to resurface from her grieving, severing all of her previously existing relationships, emotionally abandoning her family. It’s all a bit too extreme.

Jam is one of those protagonist who always has to be defined by her relationship with a male. I know both other book characters and people in real life like this, and while it doesn’t make them bad people, Jam’s inability to exist (and at such a young age, too) without a relationship is over the top, and I don’t like the message it sends to readers. Here are a few examples:

“Without Reeve, I’m hardly even a person.” -pg 51

“He was the only one I wanted to talk to, so I made my way through the crowd until a British accent drifted out, and I was like a dog who snaps to attention at its master’s voice.” -pg 42

These quotes describe a character with such a lack of agency it made me cringe. Especially when she compares herself to a dog. It’s all so dangerously self-deprecating, all in the name of “love.” Jam clearly allows Reeve (or at least her perception of him) to claim total ownership over her. What kind of message is that sending? And maybe I could have forgiven this had she become a more independent person by the end of the novel, but (minor spoiler) there’s a half-baked romance with one of the other students that serves to finally distract her from Reeve…not a friendship, not a hobby, but yet another boy.

There’s also a huge plot twist at the end of the book, that’s really shocking if you don’t happen to guess it in advance, which I did about 25% into the novel. And when I did, boy did it enrage me. Jam’s “trauma” over Reeve ends up being so inconsequential compared to her classmates with actual tragedies and post-traumatic stress disorder, almost laughably so, as she’s constructed a revisionist history inside her own head to make herself look like a martyr and has essentially existed in a fugue state for the past year over pretty standard teenage drama. To categorize her as mentally ill (which she arguably may be for the “stories” she tells and convinces herself of) and then for her to be “cured” so quickly (and largely due to starting to date another boy) is rather insulting to the entire concept of mental illness and the actual obstacles and long, committed road to recovery individuals with emotional trauma must actually face (everything gets wrapped up rather nicely and conveniently at the end of the novel, which also feels unauthentic). The boarding school setting of the book may have been intriguing, but the caricature of it being basically an institution for those suffering from PTSD from actual traumatic events was rather insulting in how simplistic and shallow it was constructed.

Overall: Belzhar wasn’t a bad book in terms of writing- in fact, I wouldn’t mind trying another one of Meg Wolitzer’s books to see if it resonates better with me. However, there were a multitude of problematic plot elements from a protagonist who cannot define herself without a male to a cursory and shallow portrayal of mental illness that undermines the real experiences of those who suffer emotional trauma. If you don’t guess it beforehand, the book does offer some exciting (though potentially anger-inducing) twists regarding the group of troubled teens that may captivate fans in the same vein as We Were Liars. I applaud Belzhar for drawing upon Sylvia Plath, but ultimately the book falls short of the large expectations derived from taking inspiration from such a prolific poet.

This review was originally posted at Girl in the Pages

[rakesandrogues]

3.5/5 stars

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Life isn’t fair; if it was, Jam Gallahue wouldn’t be shipped off to boarding school and her British boyfriend would still be alive. Belzhar tells the story of Jam, a damaged girl who was sent off to a therapeutic boarding school in Velmont called The Wooden Barn. There she was enrolled into a mysterious class called Special Topics in English where she was assigned books by Sylvia Path. Part of her homework included writing in a journal which magical sends her back into her memories to help her reclaim her past.

Jam whose real name is Jamaica is a damaged teenager; no one seems to understand how she feels and what she is going through. The same way Esther Greenwood felt within The Bell Jar. Belzhar is a psychological novel that explores the themes from Sylvia Plath’s writing in a modern day YA novel. While this book focuses on the damage that losing a boyfriend can have (especially if he dies) there was something far more scarring that just wasn’t dealt with. The protagonist got her name, Jamaica from the place her parents conceived her; I don’t know about you but I find that is far more disturbing than losing a loved one (not really).

The book takes this idea found in The Bell Jar that Jam and the other people in this class are vacuum sealed in a world no one else understands. The ideas from The Bell Jar such as depression, loneliness and suffering all play out within Meg Wolitzer’s novel in a really interesting way. This is a unique form of literary criticism; it allows the reader to get a fundamental understanding into The Bell Jar on a very basic level.

I have read a few YA novels recently and they all had a psychological element in it that I want to talk about but I do not want to spoil the plot (See review for We Are Liars soon). This makes it really difficult, because there is so much to talk about but I am very conscious about spoilers. One thing I will talk about is the magical realism thread within the book; Belzhar is the magical place they go to in their memories and relive life before things got messed up. It is an interesting way to dive into the past and deal with issues. I found it a unique way to explore the complexities of the mind via this very simple plot device.

I am not too often on-board with a magical realism thread but as I have found with Haruki Murakami it becomes a useful tool in exploring the mind. When we think about our brain, it does not conform to the laws that govern reality and the magical realism allows the author to work with that. The travels into Belzhar were just a different way to experience a flashback and I quickly accepted with the way Meg Wolitzer did that. I was a little worried when I started but I am glad I persisted.

Belzhar makes me want to revisit The Bell Jar which is a fantastic book if you have never read it. I think the biggest praise I can give Meg Wolitzer is for the loving tenderness she had towards Sylvia Plath and her writing. I have borrowed Ariel from the library to experience some of Plath’s poetry and Belzhar has left me with a renewed appreciation for this author.

This review originally appeared on my blog: http://literary-exploration.com/2014/11/21/belzhar-by-meg-wolitzer/

[bumblingbookworm]

This review was originally posted on The Bumbling Bookworm

I should preface what I'm about to say with a bit of a disclaimer: I've never read The Bell Jar. As a book that features in Belzhar in more ways than one, I think my experience reading Belzhar would've been different had I previously read The Bell Jar. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I have a feeling a lot of the allegory aspects involving The Bell Jar went RIGHT over my head.

Ah Belzhar... What can I say, this was a different book for me - I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it. I had some difficulties reading this, and a lot of that stemmed from my inability to connect with Jam. Unfortunately, I couldn't bring myself to like her, no matter how hard I tried! She would say or do things and I'd be all "but WHY?" I had a lot of difficulty relating to her, especially her coping mechanisms for dealing with her grief. The book is a bit of a slow burn, so we don't find everything out straight away. By the time I got to the big reveal about Reeve, I was just like WTF.

Check out the rest of my review here!

[Kelly]

4.5 Stars
http://www.divabooknerd.com/2014/09/belzhar-by-meg-wolitzer.html
Belzhar was incredible. A beautiful mix of heartbreaking contemporary, with a touch of magic. It follows the story of Jam, short for Jamaica, who is heartbroken with grief after losing the love of her life Reeve. She's withdrawn and her peers, parents and former teachers cannot cope with her sullen mood, and believe the best place for her to come to terms with her loss is the The Wooden Barn. It's at the teens boarding school where she shares a common interest, her peers also struggle with loss. Jam is seemingly a transparent character, she's incredibly emotional and intense, but also deals with her grief maturely even with feeling a sense that she's been abandoned. My heart broke for her grief experienced at such a young age, and as the stories of her fellow students unraveled, the emotions broke through the pages and I felt myself emotionally invested in the group of teens.

The introduction of the red leather journals brought a sense of magic to the emotional storyline. Each teen within the small hand picked group is provided with a journal, in much the same way as Sylvia Plath documented her life. But it becomes apparent that the journals hold far more than personal thoughts, they take each teen back to the life they lived before experiencing each traumatic event, and in Jam's case, it transports her to when Reeve is still alive. These aren't vivid dreams, but the spiritual plane allows you to relive old memories, but not to create new moments you haven't experienced. Subconsciously, the teens understand that their dreamscape isn't real, but begins to provide Jam with a new perspective on her relationship with Reeve and to unlock her mind. Belzhar being a play on words for their class syllabus, The Bell Jar.

Belzhar is a clever, unique concept and far more than the contemporary I had assumed it was. I was left surprised, emotional and also feeling conflicted about Jam's storyline and what she endured. My only complaint is that I would have enjoyed seeing a conclusion to each character's story, not just Jam. Even still, Meg Wolitzer is a magical storyteller, she lured me in, kept me enthralled and completely surprised me.