#27 The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Ah! To be young, gifted…and depressed. A college student working as a writer in New York, Esther Greenwood attends fashion shows, parties and rubs elbows with the literary elite. But she can’t enjoy any of it.  Esther has shut down- or has broken down- and comments on those around her as if she were a ghost observing the living.  After a nightmarish suicide attempt she seeks help, which comes in the form of badly administered electro-shock therapy.  Ironic, as at the beginning of the novel she says, “The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick.” But it’s the idea of life after college that makes her sick in the first place.