I was eager to lay my hands on this book ever since I learned from a review in the current issue of The Economist about Sylvia Plath’s unabridged journals.[1] This afternoon I found a copy at Waterstone’s in Reading. Having sampled from Sylvia’s jumbled jottings, I believe I am beginning to understand why I have been so strongly drawn to this account of a life: it is about Lauren. It is about her misplaced insecurities and her false securities, too. It is about her dreams and dreads, her flights and flops, her convictions and nagging doubts. It is about cooperation and competition with her men, the keys to her body and soul. It is about her courage and her cowardice. It is about her fleeting joys, her panics, and her lumbering depressions. That is, it is about today’s best and brightest women, who, torn by the irrepressible, implacable, insatiable demons of our age, end up by tearing themselves apart. Why else would I feel I had known Sylvia even before opening the book? Why else would I still feel I know Sylvia almost as well as I know Lauren?

Footnote

1. Kukil, K.V., ed., The Journals of Sylvia Plath: 1950-1962, London: Faber and Faber, 2000.