A review by plathfanclub
Mad Girl's Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted by Andrew Wilson

3.0

An informative, detailed and well written account of Plath's life up until she met Ted Hughes, drawing from letters, journal entries, and the testimonies of whose who knew her. Unfortunately at times Wilson makes sensationalist and stigmatising remarks about Plath. He calls into question whether she was ever really raped, given that she carried on dating the man she accused of raping her. He compares her 'essence' to that of a devil or demon or sorceress. He talks of thirteen year old Sylvia's 'highly sexualised nature' - because she draws a picture of a woman with swollen breasts. Wilson constantly casts Plath as a kind of destructive, manipulative, otherworldly force, and lots of terms such as schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder are thrown around. It's a shame because it is an informative biography.