Customer Reviews
Frightening insight into this wonderful woman - By: Eva Paget, 08 Mar 2004 
This book is hard to put down. Hayman seems to give a fairly objective review of Plath's life & although acknowledges Hughes imperfections, admits that Plath's downfall & subsequent suicide were mostly down to her own mental illness. It seems she always suffered & was trapped by her own mind. She was obviously one of those wonderful people who are incredibly clever but also tragically too clever to deal with life without too much analysis & therefore a desire to leave it. Hayman views Plath as a woman constantly obsessed by death throughout her life. Relating to Plathin any way is as frightening thing!
A good introduction to Plath & Hughes - By: , 10 Feb 2004 
I found this book to be a real "page turner" & having read a few books on Sylvia Plath, think this is a good overview of her life & would be an appropriate first book for the Sylvia Plath starter.
It's a shame the poetry couldn't be quoted fully, & the author has to use sparce quotes along with his own description of the lines (perhaps a restriction from the Hughes copyright ownership).
My only criticism is that the last chapter appears not to have been proofread - it is packed full of errors (including two versions of the title of Hughes poetry collection "Capriccio" & some sentences don't make sense.
But overall I would recommend - I didn't put it down for 3 days!
background colour to famous lives - By: , 07 Oct 2003 
The real interestin this book liesin trying to analyse, given the salient facts,what led Sylvia Plath to suicide & at the same time, to illuminate the legacy of her poetry. The background details of her life with Ted Hughes are portrayedin all their mundaneness, yet it is that very ordinariness that pinpoints her frailty. She was very dependent on her relationship with him & when he proved to be unfaithful to her, after his seduction by Assia Weil, her own faithin herself disappeared & past demons caught up with her. Having tried so hard to be the picture book wife & combine bringing up their children with writing, she finally had to admit that she couldn't do both unaided. Without Ted's support,she literally fell to pieces but the book goes beyond that to try & analyse how these factual biographical details illuminate her poetry.
