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A review by lory_enterenchanted
Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
5.0
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
Who killed Sylvia Plath? Was it the invasive mother, the dead father, the callously philandering husband, the witchy other woman, the thoughtless lover, the misguided psychiatrist, the inattentive friends? Was it the rejecting editors, the lukewarm critics, the baffled public? Was it the drugs, the doctors, the genes, the traumatic stress, the postpartum depression, the touch of madness? Was it England, was it America, was it all of Western society, was it the whole world? Was it modernity, was it toxic masculinity, was it God or the lack of God?
In this exhaustive and admirably balanced biography, all of these come in for their share of the responsibility for a poet's death. But in the end, that death remains as incalculable as the source of poetry itself. Destiny is a mystery that the biographer can only make a gesture toward, not a final judgment. This short life is one I'll be thinking about for a long time, especially the role of botched psychiatry in altering and probably ending it. That field at least needs to learn some lessons from Plath's tragic end.
Who killed Sylvia Plath? Was it the invasive mother, the dead father, the callously philandering husband, the witchy other woman, the thoughtless lover, the misguided psychiatrist, the inattentive friends? Was it the rejecting editors, the lukewarm critics, the baffled public? Was it the drugs, the doctors, the genes, the traumatic stress, the postpartum depression, the touch of madness? Was it England, was it America, was it all of Western society, was it the whole world? Was it modernity, was it toxic masculinity, was it God or the lack of God?
In this exhaustive and admirably balanced biography, all of these come in for their share of the responsibility for a poet's death. But in the end, that death remains as incalculable as the source of poetry itself. Destiny is a mystery that the biographer can only make a gesture toward, not a final judgment. This short life is one I'll be thinking about for a long time, especially the role of botched psychiatry in altering and probably ending it. That field at least needs to learn some lessons from Plath's tragic end.