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{{infoboxinfobox2
|title=Belzhar
|author=Meg Wolitzer
|reviewer=Jill Murphy
|date=October 2014
|isbn=1471123766
|amazonukaznuk=<amazonuk>1471123766</amazonuk>|amazonusaznus=<amazonus>B00KE4TCTC</amazonus>|cover=1471123766
|video=lbJ41jxKFiU
}}
Jam's grief for Reeve has left her paralysed. She does nothing but think of him and the forty-one days of their relationship. She's not interested in school. friends, food, family, even therapy. And so, in desperation, Jam's parents send her off to a boarding school for Kids With Problems. Her room-mate at the Wooden Barn, DJ, has an eating disorder. But Jam doesn't really care about that, nor does she care that she has been selected for a mysterious class: Special Topics in English, which is giving DJ some major green-eye.
There are only five kids in the Special Topics class, which is led by Mrs Quenell, and only one book to study for the entire semester: ''The Bell Jar'' by Sylvia Plath. You might think a story of depression by an author who committed suicide is an odd choice for a group of vulnerable, emotionally fragile teenagers. Jam and the group think that. But Mrs Quenelle Quenell has a way about her and the journals she gives the group to write in introduce them to a whole new world. When Jam writes in hers, she can be with Reeve again...
... but of course, nobody can live in the past forever.
It isn't perfect. There are a few places in which things could be tidied up - Mrs Quenell's role in it all doesn't quite make sense to me, sometimes both the reading of Plath and the themes of mental health felt somewhat superficial - but the main thing I took from ''Belzhar'' was that there isn't another book anything like it. If you don't enjoy cookie-cutter stories and you love literature, you'll want to read it.
Other super stories of young people dealing with children and mental health issues include [[From Where I Stand by Tabitha Suzuma]] and [[Catcall by Linda Newbery]].
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