post your unpopular literature opinions?

My overriding memory of reading The Bell Jar as a teenager is If that’s being a grown up you can keep it.

Interesting to read the various views on The Bell Jar. I think it is very good indeed but so, so rawly autobiographical that it is almost impossible to react to it as you would to any other novel.
I felt almost as if Plath was self-harming in front of me. I was angry at the intense demands it made on me, almost like I was being emotionally blackmailed by someone in my real life who was too unhappy to survive without making unreasonable requirments of other people.
She pulls it off, but if almost any other writer attempted something so naked (as many first-time writers feel inclined to do) it would be disasterously self-indulgent, unboundaried, selfish and uncreative.
It is probably Creative Writing Rule Number One - forget about The Bell Jar.

@SunlightOverBamburgh I enjoyed reading the Children Act, or would have if he hadn’t basically novelised several very well-known family law cases of which I’d read the judgment in full for my degree the year before. Not an original idea or plot point in it. Given ten minutes with my notes I could give you five or so cases where he’s just changed the names or genders around. About the only thing he added was the personal life of the judge, and I’ve seen that done better elsewhere.

The Great Gatsby is an over-extended short story.

I love rereading the Lord of the Rings and Jilly Cooper, but skip the poetry in the former and the sex scenes in the latter. Pure escapist fantasy without the boring bits!

I like Wolf Hall etc but wish she hadn’t done that “he” thing, it took me a good two books to work out it was always Cromwell and I wasted so much energy trying to work out which of the other 726163 characters it was.

As a very isolated mildly autistic person I found Elinor Oliphant very, very unrealistic and bordering on patronising at times.

Thanks - I kept getting maths definitions.

Catcher in the Rye might be transformative if you are a teenage boy.

As a teenage girl, if I wanted to hear more about the inner life of a self-absorbed and self-important, deluded teenage boy who hated everything around him, there were queues of them trying to get into my pants. I didn’t need to trawl through a novel to experience that in more detail.

@DuesToTheDirt yup. It's nasty. A nasty book.

Someone mentioned Kakuza Ishiguro. I actually enjoy his books especially The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go but I was disappointed with Klara And The Sun. It surprised me by not living up to my expectations.

I didn't enjoy Gone Girl at all. The Girl on The Train I did enjoy.

@AutumnComfort , not original

What do you all mean by a book is 'derivative'?

Yes The Cement Garden is depressing. The film is so bleak.

I LOVE LOTR. I often listen on Audible to the first book, because the first part is very funny and a real 'road' novel, and there's something very cosy about it. After that it does degenerate into lots of names and beards, though.

I picked McEwan's The Cement Garden off the shelf one day (it's DH's), but didn't get further than a passage graphically describing incestuous abuse. Grim.

That was the only bit of WH I liked! A bit grim of me and it's very random but every other bit if WH was utter bollocks.

Yes I laughed out loud at that. He is feeling very awkward at the inhospitable nature of his hosts and when he sees a basket of kittens he admires them to try and break the ice. Unfortunately it's a basket of dead rabbits waiting to be skinned and cooked. That's how I remember it anyway. I love WH, but a romance it ain't.

I like Jane Eyre a lot and Agnes Grey but I will say that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall beats all other books by the Bronte sisters hands down. Wonderfully ahead of its time. Image read Lynn Reid Banks A Dark Quartet, and I feel that Anne would have been my favourite Bronte.

Me too and I also like her poetry. I think Sylvia
Plath is a bit of a marmite authour, you either like her or you can't stand her.

The Bell Jar is of course semi-autobiographical and for me I could sense that authenticity coming through. It might have appeared pretentiously written had it been written by someone who hadn't gone through such experiences, though.

autobiographical books written about mental health I absolutely recommend are Lauren Slater's books especially Prozac Diary and Welcome to my Country. Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel is fantastic, like a cross between The Bell Jar, Girl Interrupted (the novel was way better than the film) and Catcher In The Rye but on steroids.

For me, books come in two categories. Books I read once and never again or books I read over again as I enjoy them.

White Teeth, I had high hopes for as there was a lot of hype around Zadie Smith before and when it came out. I read it and enjoyed it, but it’s not a book I’d read again, which is a shame. I do recall the characters and plot but not enough to engage me for more than one reading.

Jane Eyre is very dull and Rochester wouldn't have fallen for her in a million years.

@ManAboutTown me too - and the Austen books are top notch escapist romances (feel like I’m being a bit bleak now!)

I'm glad I'm not alone re: Wuthering Heights. Horrible characters, load of tosh.

Re: Ian McEwan, I only liked two of his books, one being The Children Act and the other one about the robot (can't recall the title off the top of my head, think it's something like The Machine and Me? Hated Chesil Beach, Atonement and couldn't finish the latest one about a young pianist being sexually abused by his teacher.

And, contrary to the views expressed on the thread so far, I really enjoyed White Teeth and saw sharp and funny observations rather than racial/cultural stereotypes. The Chalfens in particular deserved to be in a sitcom.

I thought The Bell Jar was pretentiously written (reading it now I'd probably think, "Ah, she was YOUNG, she was just showing off her wordcraft, we've all been there," but reading it as a teenager I was much less forgiving and may have had how I felt about Sylvia Plath's poetry at the back of my mind) but didn't find it unbelievable or self-indulgent. I thought the narrative and the characters were credible and engaging.

@JaninaDuszejko forgive me, I should have made myself clearer, I'm not comparing the romances in Austen's books to those of the working classes at the time. I'm just pointing out that vanishingly few gentlewomen made love matches of the sort she describes. The books wouldn't have been anywhere near as popular if they had described reality as opposed to fanstasy. Austen's own biography and those of the Bronte sisters are far more telling, to give six random examples.

Austen, the Brontes and Mary Shelley were quite early in the piece for English novelists let alone women. I prefer Eliot and Gaitskell to all three but they were quite the pioneers and all their books are readable