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Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath

Nonfiction by Anne Stevenson.

Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath
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This was a hard book to read. I'm interested in Sylvia Plath's life and death, and that's why I picked it up, but it seems that the story of a woman who struggled with a dark mental illness and eventually killed herself (but produced great art!) doesn't make for light and pleasant reading. Surprise, surprise.

Still, it seemed to me like this was a pretty honest portrait of a real woman with real problems who was also an artist. This author does not put her subject on a pedestal, and in the reviews I read, this made a lot of people mad. Sylvia Plath has become a feminist icon, but the truth is she was a person first. I liked how this author presented her realistically.

However, the book was just not enjoyable. Intellectually a great read, it dragged me down emotionally so badly I couldn't read the whole thing.

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