Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.64 AVERAGE
4.64 AVERAGE
A really masterful biographical work. An incredibly engrossing almost 1K pages. Nobody is “let off the hook,” including Sylvia herself. It’s very warts and all about everyone in Sylvia’s life. Only thing I would have wanted more of is to hear about how her children grew up coping with her loss and legacy (beyond a short paragraph about her son Nick also committing suicide in his adulthood). Ultimately though this is a book about Sylvia and after she’s gone the book deals well and almost strictly with her literary legacy.
what a tour de force work of research on sylvia plath, both exacting and empathetic. makes me want to revisit all of plath's prose and poetry with a better informed eye. unfortunately the audiobook narration is surprisingly subpar, with inconsistent pronunciations of certain names/words and words switching places or being entirely different from the text in some places.
“If she must be a myth, let her be Ariadne, laying down the threads, leading us out from the center of the labyrinth. Let us not desert her.”
•
Every page of this 1000+ page book is worth it. Heather Clark’s biography of Sylvia Plath is extremely well-researched without being dense, and the portrayal of Plath is wonderfully non-judgemental. I especially appreciated the treatment of Plath’s work—where others have used her gender, age, mental illness, relationships, or ‘confessional’ style to undermine or cloud her literary value, this biography contextualises her work without mythologising, by giving shape to the multifaceted woman behind it with exceptional vitality.
•
Enriched by Plath’s journals, letters, poems, and stories, as well as by the works of her contemporaries, most notably Ted Hughes, this biography reads beautifully even without much previous knowledge. Among many other themes, Heather Clark captures Plath’s suburban upbringing in 1940s America, her struggles facing sexism in higher education at Cambridge, her internal battle with depression and suicide, and her continuous attempts to reconcile idealised motherhood and domesticity with creative freedom and success within the constraints of her time.
[TWs: depression, suicide, electroshock therapy; mentions of domestic abuse, terminal illness, antisemitism and WWII events]
•
Every page of this 1000+ page book is worth it. Heather Clark’s biography of Sylvia Plath is extremely well-researched without being dense, and the portrayal of Plath is wonderfully non-judgemental. I especially appreciated the treatment of Plath’s work—where others have used her gender, age, mental illness, relationships, or ‘confessional’ style to undermine or cloud her literary value, this biography contextualises her work without mythologising, by giving shape to the multifaceted woman behind it with exceptional vitality.
•
Enriched by Plath’s journals, letters, poems, and stories, as well as by the works of her contemporaries, most notably Ted Hughes, this biography reads beautifully even without much previous knowledge. Among many other themes, Heather Clark captures Plath’s suburban upbringing in 1940s America, her struggles facing sexism in higher education at Cambridge, her internal battle with depression and suicide, and her continuous attempts to reconcile idealised motherhood and domesticity with creative freedom and success within the constraints of her time.
[TWs: depression, suicide, electroshock therapy; mentions of domestic abuse, terminal illness, antisemitism and WWII events]
This was total drudgery -- and I'm a fan of Plath. I just, apparently, don't require this level of detail. 40+ hours for an audiobook is a lot to bear. I think I am less of a fan after this. Don't meet your heroes, they say. Or in this case... don't read minutiae about every mistake your hero ever made.
emotional
informative
slow-paced
dark
emotional
informative
medium-paced
NR. Holyyyy moly this was long. And the fact that that’s my initial reaction says it all.
I learned SO so much about Sylvia Plath. This was incredibly well researched and I appreciated how the real-life events were connected to the writing Plath was doing at the time. Genuinely fascinating stuff and makes me want to get my hands on her poetry now.
I generally think we could have cut a lot of the dating/boys and also cleaned up some of the repetitive pieces, but I get that this is a biography and this level of research deserves to be seen. But honestly no book should be this long!
I did this as an audiobook because it helped me get through it much faster (thanks to the speed increase function), but it also meant that by the end of the book I couldn’t place any of the names or remember who was who. More an issue with my own comprehension, but still a bummer.
I would recommend to: English majors, anyone who’s read some Plath but wants to learn more, and people who have too much free time on their hands.
I learned SO so much about Sylvia Plath. This was incredibly well researched and I appreciated how the real-life events were connected to the writing Plath was doing at the time. Genuinely fascinating stuff and makes me want to get my hands on her poetry now.
I generally think we could have cut a lot of the dating/boys and also cleaned up some of the repetitive pieces, but I get that this is a biography and this level of research deserves to be seen. But honestly no book should be this long!
I did this as an audiobook because it helped me get through it much faster (thanks to the speed increase function), but it also meant that by the end of the book I couldn’t place any of the names or remember who was who. More an issue with my own comprehension, but still a bummer.
I would recommend to: English majors, anyone who’s read some Plath but wants to learn more, and people who have too much free time on their hands.
Meticulous, well-researched, but also painting clear arcs to understand Sylvia Plath's life, this was a tome but completely worth it even if it takes you a while to read. In an effort to fill in some gaps in my reading of some classics, The Bell Jar showed up on lists often so I read that first. Interested to know more about the author of which I only knew the broad strokes, this seemed like a good option for a biography. There's always bias, but it's clear Plath cut a controversial path through writing, poetry, and the people in her life. There's musing on the fine line of genius, mental illness, destruction, which is a fair meditation when some of the most prolific scientists, writers, theorists, etc have had tumultuous home lives. Keenly, we feel the sexist oppression that weighs on decisions and her conduct, and her constant inner turmoil - I'm torn between, yes, we understand and no, no we STILL don't, because the truth is even in 2021 we still have to keep saying it, explaining its validity. A fan of her poetry, my next choice is probably her full collection to make connections between pieces of her writing and the arcs of her life, seeing where they dovetail.
By far, the most comprehensive biography I have ever read. The attention to detail made it very long, but I appreciated Clark's assessment of the societal pressures Sylvia Plath felt, her poetry analysis as it related to Plath's life events, and attempt to explore what led to Plath's suicide.