The Bell Jar

Set in the summer of 1953, Sylvia Plath's only novel follows Esther Greenwood, a 19-year-old student from suburban Boston who wins an internship at a women's magazine in New York City. The work, the fashion and the city life her fellow interns seem to love leave her feeling only anxious and disoriented. Plath first published the novel under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, and it is often read as a roman a clef, because Esther's slide into mental illness mirrors what Plath herself went through. It has appeared in more than forty languages.

A reader of The CEO Library named it, through an anonymous form, as one of the three best books they read in 2019.