THE SILENT WOMAN

If you've ever seen Sylvia and Ted the movie (I saw Gwyneth Paltrow in Dunedin while they were filming, and also, Chris Martin, how, um, exciting) or delved into the mysterious world of Plath history and mythology its becomes fairly obvious fairly quickly that there's more to it than meets the eye.

Several biographies about both Plath herself and as a writer, and her relationship with husband Ted Hughes have been written and all seem to have some obvious bias or strategy of some kind.

Janet Malcolm, upon being completely dissatisfied with the lack of true information on Plath's life, coupled with a slight obsession with her poetry, wrote a brilliant biography. The Silent Woman explains previous biographies and their misgivings, while properly uncovering what really went down in Plath's life to provoke such a destructive conclusion.

A must read if you've ever wondered just what the hell was going on with this woman.