Belzhar

Starred review from July 7, 2014
When 10th grader Jam Gallahue meets British exchange student Reeve Maxfield, she fees like she finally understands love, and when she loses him, she can’t get over it. Her grief eventually lands her at the Wooden Barn, a therapeutic boarding school for “emotionally fragile, highly intelligent” teenagers. There, she’s selected for Special Topics in English, a legendary class whose eccentric teacher handpicks her students and gives out journals that, Jam learns, seem to have the ability to take students back to their lives before the disasters that changed them. Making her YA debut, acclaimed author Wolitzer writes crisply and sometimes humorously about sadness, guilt, and anger—Jam’s fellow students each have lines that divide their lives into before and after, and all of them need to move forward. Jam’s class is studying Sylvia Plath, and Wolitzer weaves her life and work into the story with a light hand. Some of this lightness is missing at the end, when Jam reflects how the journals saved her and her classmates, but this is otherwise a strong, original book. Ages 14–up. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, William Morris Endeavor.

November 24, 2014
After the death of her boyfriend, Jam Gallahue is sent to the Wooden Barn, a special high school for “emotionally fragile, highly intelligent” teens. She begins taking Special Topics in English, a class where she and four other students spend the semester studying one writer’s works: in this case, Sylvia Plath. Jam and her classmates are given journals to write in, and when they do, they are transported to a place they call Belzhar, a place that seems to exist out of time, where whatever tragedies happened to them never occurred. Narrator Marie is adept in presenting this powerful story. Jam’s English boyfriend’s voice is described as having a “scrape” to it. Marie nails that, but his accent comes and goes. This is a minor flaw in the narrator’s otherwise excellent performance. Marie gives Jam a youthful, buzzy edge; an elegant, elderly teacher has a creak to her voice that fits her age; and Jam’s little brother has a slightly squeaky tone. Marie’s choices are all true to the characters and are performed with seemingly no effort. Wolitzer’s book is a carefully crafted, heart-wrenching description of mental illness, and Marie underplays Jam’s affliction so that when the big reveal happens, listeners are taken by surprise. Ages 14–up. A Dutton hardcover.