Belzhar sampler

“For those of you who aren’t familiar with The Bell Jar,” she says, “it was written over fifty years ago by the brilliant American writer Sylvia Plath. The book is autobiographical, and it tells the story of a young woman’s depression and, I suppose, her descent into madness. Does anyone know what a bell jar is?” We shake our heads. “It’s a bell-shaped glass jar used for scientific samples. Or to create a little vacuum.

Anything that’s put under a bell jar is isolated from the rest of the world,” she says. “It’s a metaphoric title, of course. Sylvia Plath, whose depression made her feel as if she herself were in a kind of bell jar, cut off from the world, took her own life at age thirty.”

No one says anything; we just listen. “This is the one novel she wrote in her lifetime. She was a very fine and accomplished poet, and she wrote some of her most powerful work—the poems in her collection Ariel—at the end of her life. We’ll be reading them, too, of course. Oh, and she also happened to be a prolific keeper of journals over the years. Which is why,” she says, “I’m also giving you these.”

Mrs. Quenell reaches below the table again and pulls out a stack of five identical red leather journals, passing them around.

When I get mine I open it and the book makes a slight creaking sound, its spine tight. It’s a well-made object, I can tell at once, and it’s also clearly very old, the pages slightly yellowed, as if it’s been sitting in a box in a closet for decades. The pale blue lines on the paper are closer together than I’m used to, and I know that I’d have to write a lot to fill up even one page.

“Whoa, this is an antique,” says Griffin.

“Yes. Just like your teacher,” says Mrs. Quenell with a smile. She folds her hands and looks out at us. “For tonight,” 32