I had the pleasure of taking an American Women Authors class taught by Linda Wagner-Martin at UNC Chapel Hill, and let me tell you, she really knows her stuff about Plath. She fascinated us with her tales of the process of writing this book. For a fresh perspective on the life and work of Sylvia Plath, this is a good one.

So far, this is one of the clearest, and easiest to read biographies of one of the finest (and most intriguing) female poets of the 20th century. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to know more about Sylvia Plath, but doesn't feel like sorting through endless fluff and interpretations of her work. This book simply describes the life of a tortured woman writer. Good job, great reading!

Wagner-Martin shows you a life of a woman writer who was treated badly by illness and Ted Hughes. There are alot of personal photographs from her childhood. She was also an excellent sketch artist!

Ronald Hayman provides excellent insight into Sylvia Plath's life, effectively using much analysis of her poetry to tell her biography.

The main problem of writing a biography of Sylvia Plath is the roadblocks that are constantly being thrown out by her husband's controlling estates. Unlike other biographers, Hayman has managed to be honest and critical about who Plath is, and how she was treated by people around her, including her husband and his mistress. Hayman addresses critically and honestly Plath's husband controlling nature. He controlled her life when she was alive, but worse still he controlled her totally after she died. There are many crucial works and correspondences of Plath that were destroyed, or mysteriously disappeared (presumable by her husband). Hayman argues that these materials are extremely valuable to understand more Plath's life as suicide.

This is a fascinating account of the controversal life and death of one of America and England's most wondered-about poets. Gives many new details and fresh insights. Highly recommended!

This a truly fascinating account of Sylvia Plath's life, as a person, as a poet, as a literary persona, and as a wife and a mother. It is also an in-depth analysis of just WHO Sylvia Plath was ... who gets to define Sylvia for us? Does Sylvia herself do it? Do Sylvia's great poems do it? Does Sylvia's mother do it? Does Ted Hughes do it? Do Sylvia's friends and acquaintances do it? Do Sylvia's critics do it?

Who was Sylvia Plath? That is the real question this book attempts to ask and answer. Its answer is only partially successful, and it admits that. There are some things we will simply never know about Sylvia.

Fortunately, we have her great poems to enrich our lives, and we have great books like this one to ponder her life, her work, and the question of just who this poetic genius really was.

I highly recommend this book to everybody.

I, too, wasn't sure what to expect when I ordered this item. If you've ever wanted to hear Plath speaking - not just reading her poems - you'll want to listen to this tape. There are excerpts of Plath's BBC interviews, as well as interviews with Plath's mother, Aurelia, Plath's former teacher Mr. Crockett, and a host of others. The information presented is not ground-breaking or earth-shattering, but if you have read as much Plath - or as much about Plath - as I have, it's quite interesting to hear the voices of the people you have been reading about, and to hear their first hand recollections of Plath the person and the poet. HOWEVER. The problem with this tape is that it is the audio version of the video tape. Without visuals and without a book or notes to assist you, it is impossible to know who is being interviewed. Is that Dido Merwin? Al Alvarez? A Smith roommate? This is quite aggravating! At the very least a book or liner notes could have been included with this tape. So based on that important lack of information, I still recommend the tape, but would urge you to buy the video instead, if possible.

I ordered this not knowing exactly what to expect, and it surprised me a bit: it's actually the complete audio portion of the Sylvia Plath episode from the public TV series on poetry, "Voices & Visions". There is narration, sound effects(as when the visual is a windswept moor, or the sea)-and what I think are two women reading the poems-one being the author herself, and I think one doing a sort of impression of the author-though I could be wrong about that! Also, snippets of interviews with Plath-fascinating stuff! There are small portions of "dead air", where the camera is panning somewhere or other, and you only hear ambient sound-but for me that just made for a pleasantly strange audio experience-appropriate for Plath, perhaps! I didn't mind any of this, but as a caveat I will say I did *not* know what I was getting when I bought it. I hopes this helps other browsers a little.

They say that a work never truly comes alive unless it is read aloud, and it is certainly true in this case. Hearing Sylvia read aloud captures the amazing artistry and imagery in her poetry. This is definitly a 5 star book, and a welcome addition to the bookcase of any Sylvia Plath fan.

I just finished this book and was suprised at the brevity. I expected more from a "memoir," and was disappointed that it lacked depth. I have read a great deal on Sylvia Plath and this book did not tell me much that I did not already know. I did, however, like the personal spin Becker put on her encounters with Plath and Ted Hughes. The writing is very accessible and personable without excess sentimentality, which I do appreciate. However, I found the narrative overall to be lacking in punch and wonder why it took Becker so long to come out with her version of the last days. Could she be riding the coat tails of the renewed Plath interest surrounding the upcoming release of Sylvia & Ted (the film)?

A measured and moving account of Sylvia Plath's final hours, as well as a keen portrait of Ted Hughes's egotism and denial. Jillian Becker proves herself a loyal yet honest friend, even though her relationship with Plath was brief. I've already read this slim book twice. I find it haunting.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is an excellent novel, portraying the down ward spiral that almost anyone could take. In The Bell Jar, Plath allows the reader to see first hand what it is like, to be truelly depressed. Unsure of your future, and not sure if you want to continue your life. Using Esther Greenwood, Plath tells her own story of suicide attempts, and thus is able to add real insite. The story brings you on Esther's downward spiral into the depths of despair and allows you to follow her on her path to recovery. I found the book extremely interesting, it really digs deep within the human physci.

I love Sylvia Plath. I think she was a brilliant, insightful writer with an incredible sense of craft. I adore The Bell Jar, her poetry is amazing, and I have read biographies on her as well as her letters home, and I am now reading her unabridged journals.

BUT... I found Johnny Panic to be tedious. The stories seemed to be lacking Plath's biting humor, and the journal excerpts were edited, and felt stilted read out of context.

I was dissappointed.

I wasn't disappointed, per se, as much as surprised that this collection didn't live up to the standards I had set for her after reading the collected poems and The Bell Jar. This fault, I assume, lies more with me than Plath's work here. I consider myself a true fan, but I would suggest this only to those of you firmly interested in taking "all" her work into account. For most readers, though, the collected poems and The Bell Jar should suffice.

After falling in love with Sylvia Plath's works back in my high school days, I have read everything I can find on her or her work. She is inspiring and deep... keeping the imagery alive in every word she has written. I recommend Sylvia VERY highly, even her works for children are not to be missed.

This is the worst of the Plath biographies; lurid, unscrupulous and shallow. For numerous reasons, this biography is unworthy of the attention of any individual with a serious interest in Plath and her work. This biography is virtually devoid of literary criticism; instead, its locus is Plath's sexuality. Rather than treating this subject sensitively, Alexander chooses to crudely fictionalize Plath's experiences, for, one assumes, maximum voyeuristic pleasure. I am also incensed by Alexander's treatment of Ted Hughes and the tragic suicide of his lover Assia Wevill: to paraphrase Janet Malcolm in her brilliant study "The Silent Woman," he eagerly demonizes Hughes to the cusp of libel law. Luckily, Alexander's hateful assumptions about Hughes have been discounted by the publication of Birthday Letters and Plath's unedited journals. In summary, Rough Magic is a poorly-written, one-dimensional portrait of Sylvia Plath not intended for the serious Plath scholar.

Alexander, though he professes in his introduction attention to her work, spends most of his lackluster biography chronicling Sylvia's life - her latest boyfriend or her dizzying submissions to various publications. Based on exhaustive interviews and extensive archival research - especially from Aurelia Plath, Slyvia's mother, who asked not to be identified until she died - Rough Magic (a quote from Shakespeare) probes the events that shaped the life and determined the untimely death of this fiercely talented poetess.

Long on facts, short on criticism, in the end Rough Magic (an apt quote from Shakespeare's Tempest) is shallow (it pales in comparison to my favorite, the Pulitzer-winning Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris). The biography stands apart only in its full-bodied (includes fourteen pages of pictures), decidedly sympathetic view of this emotionally unstable artist; thus, though it tells us more than we have heard before about the marriage between Plath and England's poet laureate Ted Hughes, it does so from her side, portraying Hughes as craggy, possessed with horoscopes and the occult.

Yet because Hughes has never granted an interview about Plath and refuses all rights to quote unless he can vet the work, Alexander resorts to paraphrasing Plath's work, which inherently de-energizes his page but happily makes for an artful restraint on Alexander's part, which allows the harrowing circumstances of Plath's life to speak for themselves.

At long last, a biography of Sylvia Plath written by someone who refused to bow to the editorial demands of Ted & Olwyn Hughes, who unfortunately controlled the late poet's estate at the time. Choosing freedom of speech over permission to quote Plath's work, Paul Alexander has produced an extraordinary biography that reveals the true Sylvia Plath as a girl, woman, wife, mother, and most important, author. With interviews from friends and family who had never before spoken about Plath for publication, this is a book that any scholar of Plath's life and work should not miss.

One could argue that The Silent Woman is nothing more than a look at the art of writing a biography, and why biographies are so unreliable. One could also view The Silent Woman as one of the best books written about Sylvia Plath to date, surpassing Bitter Fame and Chapters in a Mythology. Both would be correct. As the host of the Journals forum at BellaOnline, I found The Silent Woman an indespencable tool in writing my article on journals and why the online journal, like the biography according to Janet Malcolm, is so unreliable.

Ms. Malcolm's book takes us through England and the US, trying to piece together the history of the Hughes/Plath marriage. Along the way, she makes some rather remarkable conclusions not only about the Plath marriage but about the biography itself -- conclusions which transcent genre and, in the end, talk about most biographical/autobiographical works, such as journals, and why we cannot always believe what we read. A wonderful, scholarly piece that everyone interested in literature, reading, or Ms. Plath's life should read.

Malcolm's characteristic interest, in all her books, is to examine the many sides in a typically academic battle regarding truth and viewpoint and show how the many people involved in the battle often shoot themselves in their feet by making self-servicing claims in their own defenses. Naturally, few things work better for this condition than the problematic of biography, and in the case of Sylvia Plath Malcolm found a humdinger of a topic.

Most literate readers know about the basic facts of Plath's life--the marriage to Ted Hughes, his philandering and subsequent abandonment of her, and her suicide in 1963. On these basic signposts various biographers (and, more crucially, Plath's friends, family, and enemies during her lifetime) have hung all sorts of interpretations, to the point where a college classmate of Malcolm's, Anne Stevenson, agreed to write an unsymathetic account of Plath's life on behalf of Hughes and his sister Olwyn--and wound up devastating her own literary career by pleasing neither the Hugheses nor Plath's advocates.

This is one of the most thoughtful studies of biography and its problems ever written, and shows the horrible things people can do to one another in the name of trying to "set the story straight."

To read any of the biographies but not read Malcolm's companion text would be almost reprehensible. Malcolm analyzes the context in which each biography was written, which is not only interesting, but also important. She also considers the effect that Plath's life and the Plath biographies have on our readings of Plath's poetry, and vice versa.

As Malcolm makes abundantly clear, every one of the many biographies of Plath is completely slanted. This includes the most (Bitter Fame) and the least (Rough Magic) professionally researched and written.

A caveat: Malcolm ultimately sympathizes with Ted Hughes, Plath's husband. Those who hate Hughes for the way he treated Plath toward the end of her life ought especially to read this book in order to get a more balanced picture of the relationship between Plath and Hughes.

There *is* a good deal of psychological theorizing in the book, but that is a strength, not a weakness. Given that Plath's life ended in suicide, it is completely appropriate for Malcolm to consider Plath's psychology and that of those around her.

I wish I could give this book two reviews--four stars for the author's perceptive criticism of Plath's poetry, and one star for her depiction of the poet's life. I was stung by her condecending portrayal of Americans in general--one would never guess that the author was an American herself! I was infuriated by the weasel-like way that Ms. Stevenson portrayed Ted Hughes's affair--that he "made contact" with the woman who became his mistress, and that Plath's jealousy essentially "forced" him to be unfaithful. I had always heard that Ted Hughes's sister had a great deal to do with the final book, and I feel that her spectre shadows almost every word. Never have someone who dislikes you write your biography--particularly if she is hiding behind another person! More fuel for the Plath-Hughes controversy, which will rage on into the next century, even though both protagonists are now dead.

It is curious that Stevenson claims hers to be the "objective" biography to correct "misunderstandings" about Sylvia Plath held by her followers ... never have I read a less objective piece of writing that attempted to pass as journalism. The book is riddled with negative adjectives for Plath at every turn ("brusque, mocking, scornful, contemptuous, fierce, snapping" - just in the course of half of one page), and every anecdote seems to be presented with the goal of depicting Plath as an emotionally stunted, deliriously ambitious, shallow American. True, all the major facts of her life are presented, given about an obligatory paragraph or so apiece, but given this kind of summary account, it is impossible for the reader to develop a sense of Plath as a whole person, an understanding of the imagery of her writing, in the same way that one does, for example, from reading Plath's unabridged journals or the excellent biography by Paul Alexander, "Rough Magic." In fact, Stevenson admits that she relies on information strictly from Hughes-based sources and certain passages from Plath's journals that reinforce her pereception of Plath as a gushing, phony American with a heart of black rot. Clearly Plath had her difficulties with various people. She had depressive tendencies and was probably not the most pleasant person to be around from time to time. But where Ted Hughes was not the epitome of evil, neither was she, and this biography does nothing to explore her humanity or the power of her poetry.

As BellaOnline's Journals host, I've delved deeply into the life of Sylvia Plath after reading and writing about her journals last year. From there, I began to read all the literature I could find, consume as much information as I could. The problem with biographies about Ms. Plath, as Janet Malcolm explains in her book The Silent Women, is that many writers about Ms. Plath's life have taken sides with her, are trying to write to prove that Ted Hughes or Olwyn Hughes, or whoever, are a certain way, according to the way Ms. Plath sees them. They are the antagonist, she is the protagonist. Unfortunately, life is not so easy to dictate sides of good and evil.

Ms. Stevenson has gotten a lot of flack for her portrayal of Sylvia Plath in Bitter Fame, and many of her detractors allege she is "too sympathetic to the Hughes side of the story." It is my opinion that not enough sympathy has been given to the Hughes side of the story, that Ms. Stevenson tries, and comes very close, to bringing us the other side of the argument, their version of the events. For those who can realize that life is not one black and white, cut and dry version of events, but a complex collage of experiences and opinions, this is an incredible book presenting a side of the Hughes/Plath marriage that most authors are afraid to present, and with good reason. The negative publicity Ms. Stevenson has recieved for her book is astounding, considering it has become one of my favorite biographies in the past year. Only "Chapters in a Mythology" by Judith Knoll and "The Silent Woman" by Janet Malcolm come close to giving us an unbiased, complete version of how others viewed Ms. Plath.