Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer (2014)


syndetics-lcTerrible name for a pretty good teen novel.

After losing her boyfriend and being unable to get over the grief, Jam is sent to The Wooden Barn, a therapeutic boarding schoool in Vermont. She gets placed in a Special Topics in English class where she and a few other students study Sylvia Plath intensely. Their unusual teacher gives them each journals to write in, and that writing takes them to very unusual places.

Surprising, suspenseful, and very thoughtful about issues of grief, guilt and blame. But a wildly undescriptive and misleading title.