The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

This book might have been a favorite for me if I had read it as an adolescent or college student. Even so, I liked it quite a bit more than I anticipated I would, and I do wish I had read it sooner (it's been on the TBR shelf for a long time). I think I feared that it would be depressing but it wasn't, even though it definitely depicted what we might call clinical depression nowadays very vividly and realistically. Apparently it was originally written in the late 1950s and frankly any woman who wasn't depressed back then was lucky indeed. I doubt that there has ever been a truly wonderful time to be a woman throughout history, but I think the mid-20th century must have been particularly difficult, because there was an illusion of possibilities that didn't really exist. Recommended.