This engrossing debut novel depicts Sylvia Plath's feverish artistic process in the bitter aftermath of her failed marriage to Ted Hughes-the few excruciating yet astoundingly productive weeks in which she wrote Ariel, her defining last collection of poems.
In December 1962, shortly before her suicide, Plath moved with her two children to London from the Hughes's home in Devon. Focusing on the weeks after their arrival, but weaving back through the years of Plath's marriage, Kate Moses imagines the poet juggling the demands of motherhood and muse, shielding her life from her own mother, and by turns cherishing and demonizing her relationship with Ted. Richly imagined yet meticulously faithful to the actual events of Plath's life, Wintering is a remarkable portrait of the moments of bravery and exhilaration that Plath found among the isolation and terror of her depression
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[GOLD SLEEPING UNDER HER EYELIDS](Anchor Books, 1 14 October 2003, first published 1 January 2003, 313 pages, paperback, bought from Amazon, Popsugar 2018 Reading Challenge, a novel based on a real person)
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I loved Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath.
I'm a huge fan of Plath. Her poetry is among the first I ever read and made me want to write my own. Her novel, The Bell Jar is one of the most heart-breaking novel's I've ever read.
So of course, I had to read this book.
This is a sad novel, almost unbearably raw and painful at times. Sylvia struggles to keep her fragile live and the life of her young children together following the end of her marriage to Ted Hughes. I really felt for her, especially when Ted tries to blame her. I loved the way the book also reflects on Plath's marriage to Hughes.
There are plenty of books about Plath but Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath is well worth a read. There are plenty of non-fiction books about the poet and her suicide. However, these do not attempt to get inside Plath's head the way this book does.
