The Bell Jar and the Hanging Garden

Both these book are novels by poets, Sylvia Plath and David Wagoner respectfully. The Wagoner book is supposed to be a horror novel -- an ex-mayor and dog-handler moves to a new town and discovers that some mutts were substituted for his pedigrees (which were killed.) He finds there is a sick, sadistic and insane cabal with the dogcatcher and the wife of the town's mayor. Sure enough there are visions of horror but the ending is too abrupt and undramatic, like that of a TV movie from the 70s. And the book is too short besides, which is too bad because it had the potential for being a study in humanity's bestial side...

The Sylvia Plath book is cool though -- I was expecting just her poetry (which I wanted to trace how she inspired Nico's the Marble Index album), but this is a good view of her struggle with schizophrenia and suicide. And plenty of dark sarcastic humor to go around as well... Imagine if Ann Coulter wasn't mired in stupid politics, she'd write something like this...