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micahdornfeld 's review for:
Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
by Heather Clark
Everyone ignore that I've been reading this book on and off for over a year...it was SPECTACULAR and I was savoring it!
Heather Clark chronicles the brilliant yet short life of Sylvia Plath in such honest and complex detail from childhood to the moments before her suicide in 1963. I am floored by the level of research this book required. I learned so much about Plath's life, her immense talent, her struggles, and who she was as a person; which is who we all are as people--complicated with conflicting attitudes and aspirations. Clark so adeptly captures this duality in us all. Clark would expert a letter to Aurelia, Sylvia's mother, where Plath talks about how happy she is in London against an event that occurred that day that showed the exact opposite. Or how Plath would say different things to different people in her circle about her attitude toward her relationship with Ted Hughes. And this is exactly what a life is, complicated. Then there is the masterful way Clark dissects Plath's poems, which for someone who is no poetry scholar, was fascinating.
Again, the research! The vivid picture Clark paints using letters, diary entries, calendars, weather, financial information, photographs, poems, interviews was just so thorough. We know so much about this mythic woman, and also there is still so much missing from the archive that one can never know about another person.
Simply no notes, this may be one of my top ten favorite books of all time for its subject and the incredible way it is written.
Heather Clark chronicles the brilliant yet short life of Sylvia Plath in such honest and complex detail from childhood to the moments before her suicide in 1963. I am floored by the level of research this book required. I learned so much about Plath's life, her immense talent, her struggles, and who she was as a person; which is who we all are as people--complicated with conflicting attitudes and aspirations. Clark so adeptly captures this duality in us all. Clark would expert a letter to Aurelia, Sylvia's mother, where Plath talks about how happy she is in London against an event that occurred that day that showed the exact opposite. Or how Plath would say different things to different people in her circle about her attitude toward her relationship with Ted Hughes. And this is exactly what a life is, complicated. Then there is the masterful way Clark dissects Plath's poems, which for someone who is no poetry scholar, was fascinating.
Again, the research! The vivid picture Clark paints using letters, diary entries, calendars, weather, financial information, photographs, poems, interviews was just so thorough. We know so much about this mythic woman, and also there is still so much missing from the archive that one can never know about another person.
Simply no notes, this may be one of my top ten favorite books of all time for its subject and the incredible way it is written.