[The Bell Jar] is a clever first novel, and the first feminine novel I've read in the Salinger mood…. [Esther] is very sharp indeed with the world—certainly one can't see the New York and Boston she describes offering her any support or satisfying any possible human need. But her sharpness is expressed in such an inner-directed way that on the rare occasions her thoughts get out and touch the world at all they do so only at a tangent: 'If there's anything I look down on, it's a man in a blue outfit. Black or grey, or brown even. Blue just makes me laugh.' This, I suspect, is meant as a point in her favour, and so is her whole breakdown. Despite the asylums and the shock treatment, she goes mad in a rather undisturbing way, partly because she writes about it with such bright assurance...