The Bell Jar changed my perception of depression, articulating feelings I hadn't realised you could even decipher the edge of. Her poems I haven't so easily warmed to, so here are some extracts from her one great prosaic work:
"At this rate, I'd be lucky if I wrote a page a day.
Then I knew what the problem was.
I needed experience.
How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die? A girl I knew had just won a prize for a short story about her adventures among the pygmies in Africa. How could I compete with that sort of thing?"
"To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream."
“I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers’ sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.”
"I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
“There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.”
Obviously I also have to include the trailer to the 2004 film. It's not real unless they made a film of it.
(FYI, if Daniel Craig has wetted your apatite for some Bond, James Bond, go and see Skyfall, it's probably the best Bond ever - well done Sam Mendes.)
