Books like The Bell Jar
A young woman's descent into depression in 1950s New York, told with razor wit and suffocating clarity.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of The Bell Jar
The Bird's Nest
Elizabeth Richmond, a meek museum clerk, starts receiving threatening letters she seems to have written herself, and her doctor discovers she is sharing her body with several other women.
Moonglow
On his deathbed, Michael Chabon's grandfather tells him the long-buried story of his life, from hunting Nazi rocket scientists in the war to a stint in prison and his marriage to a troubled French survivor.
Nobody Is Ever Missing
Elyria walks out of her marriage in New York without a word and flies to New Zealand on a one-way ticket, hitchhiking across the country and narrating her unraveling in long, breathless sentences.
World's Fair
A boy grows up in 1930s Bronx, and the World's Fair becomes the lens through which he sees his family, his neighbourhood, and the promise of American modernity.
The Catcher in the Rye
A teenager expelled from prep school wanders New York City for three days, raging against phoniness while revealing the grief he can't face.
The Hours
Three women in three eras live through a single day linked by Mrs Dalloway: Virginia Woolf writing it in 1923, Laura Brown reading it in 1949 Los Angeles, and Clarissa Vaughan, nicknamed Mrs Dalloway, giving a party in 1990s New York.
Big Sur
Worn out by the fame On the Road brought him, Kerouac's stand-in Jack Duluoz hides in a friend's cabin in Big Sur to dry out, and the solitude turns into something closer to a breakdown.
Go Tell It on the Mountain
On his fourteenth birthday in 1930s Harlem, John Grimes struggles with his stern preacher father, the church and his own desires, while the prayers of his family reveal the histories that shaped them.
Junky
Burroughs's first book, a flat, exact account of a heroin user's life in 1940s New York, New Orleans and Mexico City, told by a man who has learned everything about the drug except how to stop.
Ham on Rye
A boy grows up in Depression-era Los Angeles with an abusive father and an imagination fuelled by books, and the suffering is leavened by a stubborn refusal to be defeated.
The Rum Diary
In 1958, Paul Kemp, a young freelance journalist, takes a job at a failing English-language newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and drinks, brawls and drifts towards trouble, in Thompson's early autobiographical novel.
Hangsaman
A troubled young woman leaves home for college and begins to unravel in ways that may or may not be real.