The Book Club: January Edition 2025

A whole month into 2025 has passed! We hope everyone has an amazing start to the new year. Take care and keep reading.

Arya’s recommendation:

'The Bell Jar', by Sylvia Plath

One of my friends picked this up recently and all I could say was 'good luck'. This book is so moving and devastating. I'll never stop thinking about the fig tree metaphor. 

'The Bell Jar' follows Esther Greenwood, a student interning for a fashion magazine, who experiences an increasingly severe mental breakdown. The plot mirrors Plath's own experiences and, if you know about her life, you'll know this is heavy reading (to say the least). 

Although the book is often read as largely autobiographical, this can take away from Plath's deft skill, especially when it comes to devising incisive metaphors. The titular image of the bell jar allows Plath to explore Esther's increasing sense of suffocation within her own life, and I found it added a lot to the discussions of pregnancy and motherhood too. It's a difficult but brilliant piece of work that I will one-day re-read. One of those books you have to read in your life! I'll leave you with the fig tree metaphor, because describing it won't do it justice.

'I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.'

Jiya’s recommendation:

'The Odyssey' by Homer

With the new year now here, things have been hectic, and I can feel myself stepping into a time of real change. Not just small shifts, but something bigger, something that will test me in ways I haven’t faced before. Challenges, real challenges, are ahead, and that’s why The Odyssey feels like the perfect book to reflect on right now.

I first came across this epic in sixth form while studying Classical Civilisation, another time in my life when everything felt like it was shifting. Back then, the themes of journeys, courage, and fate fascinated me. But looking at it now, with everything going on, it feels even more relevant.

The idea of fate stood out to me the most during my studies, and even now, it’s something I think about a lot. How much of our path is set in stone? How much do we shape ourselves? The Odyssey plays with these ideas in such an interesting way, coincidences, entanglements, the way people and events weave together unexpectedly. That’s something I’ve been noticing more in my own life too.

If you haven’t read it, I’d definitely recommend giving it a go. It’s not just a legendary story; it’s full of moments that feel real, even in all their myth and grandeur. The struggles, the choices, the resilience, it all still applies today. And at a time when life feels like an odyssey of its own, there’s no better book to revisit. Homer’s classic poem will always be a recommendation on my list.

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