jessica_philli 's review for:

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark

---

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.