Books like The Bell Jar

01

An Unquiet Mind

Kay Redfield Jamison · Psychology

Kay Redfield Jamison is a psychiatrist and professor who has manic-depressive illness.

A kindred memoir read.

02

The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion · Memoir

Joan Didion's account of the year following the sudden death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, is the most rigorous and unflinching memoir of grief in American literature.

A kindred memoir read.

03

Reasons to Stay Alive

Matt Haig · Memoir

Reasons to Stay Alive is Matt Haig's account of the severe depression and anxiety disorder he experienced in his mid-twenties, and how he survived it, returned to functioning, and eventually to something he could call a good life.

A kindred memoir read.

04

Educated: A Memoir

Tara Westover · Memoir

Educated is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho and eventually earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University.

Both dig into identity.

05

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

Roxane Gay · Memoir

Hunger is Roxane Gay's memoir of her body — how it came to be the way it is, what she has thought about it, and what it means to live in a body that the world reads as a problem to be solved.

Both dig into identity.

06

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

Suleika Jaouad · Memoir

Suleika Jaouad was twenty-two and newly graduated, living in Paris with her first real job and a boyfriend, when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

Shares identity and survival with The Bell Jar.

07

Hunger

Roxane Gay · Memoir

Hunger is Roxane Gay's memoir about her body, the trauma that shaped it, and the world's persistent refusal to accommodate it.

Shares identity and survival with The Bell Jar.

08

Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire

Andrew Wilkinson · Memoir

Never Enough is Andrew Wilkinson's memoir about building a small empire of internet companies — Tiny, the holding company he co-founded, has acquired dozens of businesses — and discovering that accumulating wealth at a level he'd once have considered unimaginable didn't resolve the anxiety that had driven him to pursue it.

Shares identity and ambition with The Bell Jar.

09

Scar Tissue

Anthony Kiedis · Memoir

Scar Tissue is Anthony Kiedis's account of his life from a chaotic childhood in Michigan through the formation and commercial peak of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with addiction and recovery as the book's spine.

Shares identity and survival with The Bell Jar.

10

The Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank · Memoir

Anne Frank's diary, kept during the two years she spent hiding with her family in a concealed Amsterdam apartment, stands as one of the most widely read first-person accounts of the Holocaust.

Shares identity and survival with The Bell Jar.

11

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

Maxine Hong Kingston · Memoir

The Woman Warrior is not a conventional memoir.

Shares identity and gender with The Bell Jar.

12

Twelve Years a Slave

Solomon Northup · Memoir

Twelve Years a Slave, published in 1853, is the memoir of Solomon Northup, a free Black man from New York who was kidnapped in 1841, sold into slavery in Louisiana, and held for twelve years before recovering his freedom.

Shares identity and survival with The Bell Jar.