Belzhar

Meg Wolitzer

Sep 2014 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

ONE OF TIME AND NPR’S TEN BEST YA BOOKS OF THE YEAR • From the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion comes a “smart and engrossing” (School Library Journal) story of a young girl who finds solace after the tragic loss of her boyfriend at a boarding school in Vermont.

“Expect depth and razor sharp wit in this [young adult] novel from the author of The Interestings.”—Entertainment Weekly

“A prep school tale with a supernatural-romance touch.”—Glamour

There’s a place where the lost go to be found.

If life were fair, Jam Gallahue would still be at home in New Jersey with her sweet British boyfriend, Reeve Maxfield. She’d be watching old comedy sketches with him. She’d be kissing him in the library stacks.

She certainly wouldn’t be at The Wooden Barn, a therapeutic boarding school in rural Vermont, signed up for an exclusive, supposedly life-changing class called Special Topics in English that focuses—only and entirely—on the works of Sylvia Plath.

But life isn’t fair. Reeve has been gone for almost a year, and Jam is still mourning.

When a journal-writing assignment leads Jam into a mysterious other-world she and her classmates call Belzhar, she discovers a realm where the untainted past is restored, and she can feel Reeve’s arms around her once again. But, as the pages of her journal begin to fill up, Jam must confront hidden truths and ultimately decide what she’s willing to sacrifice to reclaim her loss.

Ratings and reviews

I'm not going to spoil anything but 40 pages from the physical end of the book has me questioning everything, and not in a good way. There was this build up through out the book and then it just fell through, really disappointed.

I am halfway through the book and can't put it down

About the author

Meg Wolitzer’s novels include The Interestings; The Uncoupling; The Ten-Year Nap; The Position; and The Wife. Wolitzer’s short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. About The Interestings, the New York Times Book Review said, “Remarkable . . . [The Interestings’s] inclusive vision and generous sweep place it among the ranks of books like Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot. The Interestings is warm, all-American, and acutely perceptive about the feelings and motivations of its characters, male and female, young and old, gay and straight; but it’s also stealthily, unassumingly, and undeniably a novel of ideas. . . . With this book [Wolitzer] has surpassed herself.”