Belzhar

Written in 2014 by Meg Wolitzer, Belzhar is a young adult contemporary novel. Narrated by sixteen-year-old Jamaica “Jam” Gallahue, the story follows Jam’s unusual experiences in a therapeutic boarding school where she enters the magical world of Belzhar to recover from her depression. The book’s title, Belzhar, is a reference to Sylvia Plath’s 1963 semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar. Plath suffered from clinical depression, killing herself shortly after The Bell Jar was published. In Belzhar, Wolitzer addresses mental health issues by exploring themes of grief, overcoming loss, and the healing power of friendship.

When Jam is emotionally unable to move on from the sudden, unexplained death of her British-exchange student boyfriend, Reeve Maxwell, Jam’s family sends her to The Wooden Barn, a boarding school in Vermont that offers therapy for “emotionally fragile, highly intelligent” teens. As Jam explains in the prologue, “I was sent here because of a boy. His name was Reeve Maxfield, and I loved him and then he died, and almost a year passed and no one knew what to do with me.” Jam remembers meeting him in gym class and drawing his portrait in art. Jam cherishes a jar of strawberry preserves that Reeve gave her the first night they kissed, vowing never to open it. Although Jam had only known Reeve for forty-one days, she feels incomplete without him: she has panic attacks in school and at home stays in her room sleeping. Her friends eventually stop coming to visit.

At The Wooden Barn, Jam discovers that she is enrolled in an elite Special Topics in English class with four other students. Jam’s roommate, DJ, is jealous. DJ explains that the class is “legendary” and is only taught when the teacher, Mrs. Quenell, feels she has the right mix of students. Mrs. Quenell hand-picks each student for this unique course. In addition to Jam, the class includes Sierra, a beautiful African American ballet dancer from DC; serious-looking Marc; red-headed, wealthy, wheelchair-bound Casey; and Griffin, a hostile, blonde farm boy from the area. Mrs. Quenell announces that the class will be studying only one writer, Sylvia Plath, during the semester, and gives them each a red leather journal that they are expected to write in twice a week. Mrs. Quenell also mysteriously asks the students to “look out for one another.”



Jam believes there is nothing she could possibly write about except Reeve, and the first time she writes in her journal, she is transported to a world where Reeve still exists. She is overjoyed to feel his arms around her. When the sky in the magical world begins to dim, Jam finds herself back in her dorm room and notices that she has written five pages in her journal. Each of the other students in Mrs. Quenell’s class has similar experiences when they write in their journals: they revisit a time in their life before their trauma occurred. The five quickly become close friends and begin to meet one night a week to discuss their experiences in the land they call Belzhar.

Slowly, each of the teens opens up and shares his or her emotionally devastating experiences that brought them to The Wooden Barn. Sierra’s younger brother, a hip-hop and jazz student, was kidnapped on the way home from dance class. Casey was paralyzed when her drunken mother crashed their car. A secret caused Marc’s parents to break up. Griffin was involved in a barn fire that caused the death of many goats. Jam is supportive of the others, but she is reluctant to share her story of loss with them.

Jam begins to participate in school activities, joining an acapella group and trying cross country skiing. She is attracted to Griffin and spends Thanksgiving break with his family. Meanwhile, the five continue to visit Belzhar. They learn that nothing can happen in Belzhar that they haven’t already experienced in the real world. As Sierra, Marc, Casey, and Griffin begin to work through their trauma and heal, Jam unrealistically continues to cling to Reeve, even though their relationship can never grow or change. Jam recognizes that Reeve is becoming boring to her, because he remains the same as when they were together and she is gradually moving on in life, but she still wants to hang on to her memories of happiness. Meanwhile, Marc and Casey begin dating, and Sierra thinks that her visits to Belzhar may have given her a clue to the person who abducted her brother.



As the students fill up their journals, they wonder what will happen when they reach the end. Casey finds out first, discovering that once the journal is full, they cannot return to Belzhar. Additionally, in their final trip to Belzhar, they must each relive their traumatic incidents. Jam is conflicted because she wants to end things with Reeve and be with Griffin, but she also wants to stay with Reeve.

In a surprising final twist, Jam reveals that Reeve is not really dead, and was never really her boyfriend. Instead, Reeve was a boy she crushed on who would make out with her occasionally. Jam believed they were in love. When Jam catches Reeve with his real girlfriend, she explains, “He didn’t love me, so I closed my eyes and killed him in my mind.” Jam tells her family and everyone at The Wooden Barn that Reeve is dead. Jam remembers her doctor telling her that it is “sometimes easier to believe a story.” Jam, at last, opens her sacred jar of preserves and shares it with DJ, revealing that she is at last over Reeve.