Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath

“An extraordinary achievement, a fusion of sensitive insight, compassion, and lucidity.

“She has managed to see through the murk that has surrounded the image of Sylvia Plath for over a quarter of a century, and to bring into focus the driving passions and conflicts of the brilliant woman, the urgent unfolding of the talent that made Sylvia’s poems, and the substance of the poems themselves, and she has made sense of their relation to each other in a way that – as we now know – was unavailable to anyone in Sylvia’s lifetime. It is the most comprehensive, balanced, and perceptive work on Sylvia Plath’s life and death and work that I know.” — WS. MERWIN