​One day during the late autumn when I was 16, I was hanging out on the couch and watching MTV (which is what I did instead of going to school), and a piece came on about the new album by The Bangles, Everything.​ I started paying attention because even then I couldn't get enough music by women (even though at that point i was deeply entrenched in my Depeche Mode fangirlyness) and I'd very recently bought my own copy (a cassette tape which yes, I confess to still owning; it's in my box o' tapes in the closet under the stairs). At one point, the VJ (I'm pretty sure it was Martha Quinn, but I could be mixing up memories; I watched a lot of MTV back then, when it was good) started talking about the song "Bell Jar," which I already loved because it had the line "she dresses in black because sorrow is a magnet." I just didn't really know what it was talking about. (Other than the obvious, which is suicide.) Who was the girl, why was she one of the world's seven wonders, what was a bell jar anyway?

The VJ (let's just go ahead with my Martha Quinn image) asked the band about the song, and Vicki Peterson explained. (At least, I'm pretty sure it was Vicki. It definitely wasn't Susanna Hoffs, who sort of annoyed me.) The song was a tribute to the poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, who had committed suicide, I learned, in 1963.

Maybe because there was also sadness hidden in my bizareness, I was immediately intrigued. I checked out The Bell Jar (Plath's novel) and Ariel (her second book of poetry and the one she is known for). I didn't understand the poems, although the last two stanzas from "Edge" lodged themselves irrevocably in my memory ("The moon has nothing to be sad about/Staring from her hood of bone.//She is used to this sort of thing./ Her blacks crackle and drag.") But the novel—I read it straight through, two times, before returning it, and it, too, lodged itself into my psyche.

Reading The Bell Jar at sixteen just when I was transitioning into my life's darkest period? Totally changed everything for me.

I read everything I could find by her after that, into my twenties. Which means I've read her short story collection, her children's book The Bed Book (acquired through an interlibrary loan when I was in college, as it is long out of print, sadly enough), her journals and her letters. Plus various books about Plath and her works. I understand her poetry better now and tend to re-read The Bell Jar every five years or so.

I love other writers, but Plath holds a special place in my heart. (And yes, before you point it out or even really think it: I am aware that this a totally cliched part of my life. Depressed, wears-all-black, poetry-loving teenage girl adores Sylvia Plath. I know. It's a weakness. But it's also undeniable that her writing changed me.)

All of which is a super-long explanation for why I was excited to read Meg Wolitzer's YA novel, Belzhar. I enjoyed (but never finished) her novel The Interestings​, but what grabbed my attention was its connection to Sylvia Plath. It tells the story of Jam Gallahue, ordinary (and maybe slightly boring) 16-year-old who has a short but intense relationship with a foreign exchange student from England, Reeve Maxfield. Short because 41 days in, he dies. This sends Jam into a tailspin that eventually lands her at The Wooden Barn, a private school for teenagers suffering from emotional difficulties.

One of Jam's classes is Special Topics in English, which only a few students each year are allowed to take. She didn't request it and isn't sure why she is enrolled. There are only four other students, and this semester they will focus exclusively on one writer: Sylvia Plath.

Special Topics in English is a sort of a legendary class at The Wooden Barn. All of the students who take it grow extraordinarily close, and even though they won't tell the other students how or why, they talk about how it changed their lives. Jam is reluctant, but as she's out of places to start over, goes to class anyway.

How and why it changes her life—a slightly magical and mysterious process—is why you read the book.

I want to give this a glowing review. And I did love some of it, especially the overarching concept. Especially watching Jam as she transforms and finds her footing again. Part of the process of healing is being forced to re-experience what really happened to her, and what that was surprised me. It made me look back at my own experiences and wonder how much perception influenced them. I loved the mini-rant that Wolitzer, channeling Jam's voice, takes about the decline of studying English and the focus on STEM. I loved the setting (boarding schools always get me).

But what disappointed me is that they don't really ever talk much about Plath. There's an excerpt from "Mad Girl's Love Song" and some references to The Bell Jar...but not enough. Maybe Wolitzer was trying to avoid that teenager-girl-loves-Plath cliche by not bring up Plath's actual work, but then why bother including Plath anyway? Without some specific pieces of her writing, the fact that they're studying Plath almost doesn't matter to the story, aside from some general thematic connections. The poem is an obvious choice, but there are so many other snippets that could add depth. How, for example, can such a book not reference "the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am."

Of course, it could just be me and my historical connections to Sylvia Plath. Maybe if you were never a Plath fangirl, it won't be a thing for you. I just...I really wanted to see the characters truly interacting with her writing, because I think it is powerful and life changing; I think there are reasons that teenagers of a certain persuasion are drawn to her. Partly it is the drama and darkness of the story. But that would eventually lose its appeal if the writing didn't also resonate. So to include almost none of it in a book about how studying Sylvia Plath (among other things) changes a character? Well, it's very nearly obscene to me.

Ridiculous at the very least. Or just not very brave. (Because it does take a certain kind of courage to include lots of poetry in a YA novel.)

The New York Times says that Belzhar "celebrates the sacred, transcendent power of reading and writing." It does​ do that, and that is its transcending grace. But I couldn't love it. It disappointed me by feeling cowardly.