Reader's Choice

Sylvia Plath's semi-autobiographical account of a young girl's deteriorating mental health is probably the most telling account of Plath's own melancholia and subsequent breakdown during her youth. Set in America during the late 1950s, The Bell Jar (Faber & Faber, £5.99) is a story of Plath's alias, a successful young writer who finds herself lost in a world of social convention and rapidly being swept away by the tide of depression.

The Bell Jar sees its heroine's descent into illness, institutionalisation and battle towards recovery and a normal life. All the while, despite the novel's somewhat sombre theme, Plath manages to interweave her own cynical brand of humour with her character's despair and yet she does so without undermining the very earnest issue of mental illness. Plath's honesty provides the reader with an insight into the mindset of one of the centuries finest writers and is a must read.