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The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath

Literary FictionDark & GrittyIdentityLoss & Grief

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What to read after The Bell Jar

Books matched by the same qualities that made The Bell Jar unforgettable: dark & gritty tone, balanced pacing, and themes of Identity and Loss & Grief.

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A disillusioned teenager wanders New York for three days after being expelled -- the defining novel of adolescent alienation.

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A soldier carries grief, terror, love, and the weight of his dead through the jungles of Vietnam -- and never puts any of it down.

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A beautiful, privileged young woman in early-2000s New York attempts to sleep for an entire year, using a cocktail of medications prescribed by a reckless psychiatrist.

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No Longer Human cover
05 No Longer Human Osamu Dazai

A man pieces together the notebooks of a stranger whose life was a sustained performance of humanity concealing a radical inability to connect.

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