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plathfanclub's reviews
242 reviews
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.
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose and Diary Excerpts by Sylvia Plath
5.0
Admittedly I didn't read the journal extracts as I felt they were kind of disembodied. The short stories were a joy. 5 stars for Plath's prose but the stories really need reorganising and publishing in a new, better edition.
Girl With Dove: A Life Built By Books by Sally Bayley
5.0
'So the child with the white blanket runs across the meadow and the clouds puff and blow, puff and blow, and the child lifts up his arms and sails into the sky'
One of the most extraordinary books I have read. Powerful, moving, unsettling, enchanting, obscure. Navigating your way through the fog of Bayley's life is often challenging - as her mother says, facts are often thin on the ground - but 'Girl with Dove' is so good at capturing the hazy, often confusing world of childhood and the way in which we can make sense of often traumatic experiences through literature. As child Sally discovers, books are a refuge in which we can hide - but they also allow us to fly free, sparrows rising from the ash and dust towards a better world.
One of the most extraordinary books I have read. Powerful, moving, unsettling, enchanting, obscure. Navigating your way through the fog of Bayley's life is often challenging - as her mother says, facts are often thin on the ground - but 'Girl with Dove' is so good at capturing the hazy, often confusing world of childhood and the way in which we can make sense of often traumatic experiences through literature. As child Sally discovers, books are a refuge in which we can hide - but they also allow us to fly free, sparrows rising from the ash and dust towards a better world.