I would recommend the book Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer to my friends. In the beginning, the protagonist, Jamaica Gollahue, nicknamed Jam, is sent by her parents to The Wooden Barn, a boarding school for emotionally hurt people, because her English boyfriend, Reeve Maxfield, "died". She attends a class called "Special Topics" to study Sylvia Plath's writing and read The Bell Jar, and she with four other students are given journals, by Mrs. Quenell, and are assigned to write about anything they wish. Jam soon discovers that writing in her journal brings her to another peaceful world with Reeve. Jam states,"I"m unable to get over how he's [Reeve] simply been returned to me like a lost object that I'd long ago misplaced." As the students progress …show more content…
Casey and Marc are the first of the group to visit Belzhar for the last time, to tell Jam, Griffin, and Sierra that they will have to revisit the day where their life tok the dramatic turn that changed who they are as individuals. Jam is the last to go into Belzhar, and after facing the fact that Reeve never loved her, and that he has gone back to England, she realizes that it isn't such a tragedy, and then life becomes better for her. She states, "And I also know that pain might seem like an endless ribbon... You keep gathering it toward you, and as it collects, you really can't believe that there's something else at the end of it. Something that isn't just more pain. But there's something else at the end; something at least a little more different." As the class comes to an end, Mrs. Quenell admits to knowing what the journals do for the students, and how she put the five students together because of their "similar stumbling blocks." She healed each student by matching them with Sylvia Plath, who had her own depression problems, and helped the students relate. They conquered their own problems, and I believe this book can touch or help other readers as