Down the Rabbit Hole

The Belljar

Blog Harbor Challenge
Prompt - Day 22: What is that one book that you have read only once in your life and think you'll never be able to go back to it again? Whether it's because of the strong emotional impact it left on you, or because it was so bad that you dread from thinking about reading it again, or because it was part of the school literature you just couldn't get away from, or whatever reason that particular book made you not wanting to go back to it again. Tell us who is the author, what was it all about, and why is it that you think you can't read it second time or more?

Sylvia Plath's The Belljar , was assigned reading for me as a junior in high school. Something about the author's slow descent into madness profoundly affected me. I struggled for a long time after with troubling thoughts and fears about developing mental illness. For so many years my handle in this site was "fearthebelljar" for that reason. It stayed with me in disturbing way. I felt the idea of something like that hanging over one's head like a belljar filled me with anxiety and unease. I respected Plath so much for the quality of her writing but I never could go back and read it again.