What we have left is now

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What is left for us is now (English original title: Belzhar ) is a youth novel by the American author Meg Wolitzer . The original edition was published in 2014.

What remains for us is now about the 16-year-old Jam, who is supposed to overcome the death of her first great love in a boarding school for traumatized students. She is selected for a special literature course and receives a diary from the teacher, which has inexplicable abilities. The novel deals with the topics of first love, loss, friendship and mental illness in adolescence.

content

16-year-old Jam lives with her parents and brother in Crampton, New Jersey . Because she can't cope with the death of her first love, Reeve, her parents send her to the Wooden Barn boarding school in Vermont . Wooden Barn specializes in dealing with “emotionally fragile, highly intelligent teenagers”.

Along with four other classmates, Sierra, Casey, Marc and Griffin, Jam is selected to take part in a course called Selected Topics in Literary History. In this course you will read the book The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and deal intensively with the subject and the life story of the writer. In addition, the teacher, Mrs. Quenell, gives them a diary each and instructs them to write in it regularly.

Shortly afterwards they find out that this diary has a magical ability: While writing, the young people come for a short time to a place where their individually experienced trauma has not yet taken place. Jam rips off to Belzhar and meets with Reeve there. She experiences these trips very intensively and is initially overjoyed to have Reeve back. But time stands still in Belzhar and there she can only experience what she has experienced in real life with Reeve. Jam is disappointed to find that Reeve and her relationship with him cannot develop any further in Belzhar.

Together they call this place Belzhar (derived from "The Bell Jar") and share their experiences in regular meetings. Belzhar welds the youngsters together and they become good friends. When Jam can't drive to her family's home as planned because of a snow storm over Thanksgiving , Griffin takes them to his family's farm near the boarding school. Jam learns about Griffin's trauma and the two grow closer. But Jam is immediately plagued by guilt that she can't get involved with Griffin while she is still in love with Reeve.

Then the pages of the diary draw to a close and Jam and her friends are excited but also afraid of what will happen when they have finished writing the last page of the diary. Casey and Marc are the first to dare and they tell Jam, Sierra and Griffin that there is no going back to Belzhar once the diary is full. Casey describes the last visit to Belzhar as disturbing because you have to relive the day of the traumatic experience. Sierra, whose little brother has disappeared and was probably kidnapped, decides to change history on her last visit and thus remains in Belzhar. She has a seizure, falls into a coma, and is hospitalized. Griffin also goes to Belzhar and relives his trauma.

Jam is now the last of the friends and is wondering whether she, like Sierra, wants to stay in Belzhar or will return. Undecided, she goes to Belzhar one last time. Jam is back in New Jersey on the school fields. It's her last day with Reeve. She catches Reeve kissing another girl. Jam relived all the situations she had previously experienced with Reeve and it becomes clear that her love for Reeve was largely unrequited. To protect herself, she arranged the story in the way that was least painful for her. Jam and Reeve were never really together, and he didn't actually die either. Jam just persuaded himself and named it that way to deal with the hurtful situation. Jam manages to let go of Belzhar and leave Reeve. When she returns, she immediately goes to Griffin and tells him the truth. Griffin is very understanding. Jam learns that Sierra's brother has been found and contacts him. She asks him to speak to Sierra at the hospital.

The students confront Mrs. Quenell with the magical abilities of the diaries and she tells them that as a young girl, after a nervous breakdown, she was admitted to a mental hospital and met Sylvia Plath, another patient. After Sylvia Plath killed herself a few years later and her diaries were published, Mrs. Quenell bought a box full of diaries at a flea market to distribute to her students. Since then, she has chosen a group of five students every six months to go through the painful but equally healing process that comes with keeping a journal. The group of Jam and her friends were the last group before Mrs. Quenell retires.

To everyone's relief, Sierra wakes up from a coma after her brother visits her in the hospital. Just before the winter break, Jam's mother suggests that Jam could return to the family in Crampton for the second semester, but Jam decides to stay at Wooden Barn for the time being because of her friends, and Griffin in particular.

expenditure

Web links