First published 2008
Sylvia Plath grows up brilliant and driven, writing poetry that burns with intensity. Her family watches her excel at Smith College. Friends see her struggle with depression. Doctors treat her after her first suicide attempt. Fellow writers witness her talent and ambition. Her husband Ted Hughes experiences their passionate and turbulent marriage. Each person who enters Plath's orbit carries pieces of her story, from her childhood in Massachusetts to her final days in London. Through their eyes, we see a young woman wrestling with creativity and mental illness, motherhood and marriage, success and despair. These voices reveal how Plath appeared to the world around her, capturing moments both ordinary and devastating. The poems trace her journey from a precocious child to a celebrated poet, showing how those closest to her experienced her fierce intelligence, her dark moods, and her relentless pursuit of artistic perfection. Each perspective adds another layer to understanding the woman behind the legend, building toward the tragedy that ended her life at thirty.
Genres: biography, literary-fiction, 20th-century, poetry, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: London, Massachusetts, Smith College
Period: 20th Century
272 pages · Paperback · Random House Children's Books
Content warnings: depression, mental-illness, suicide