Sylvia Plath

Sylvia was born in 1932 and had a difficult childhood due to her feelings of inadequacy and her constant need to please her parents. These feelings became intensified when her father died in 1940, and when the family moved Wellesley and Sylvia had to leave close friends. Continuing to excel and earn honors and awards in school and especially in writing, Sylvia attended Smith College in 1950. During her college years, Sylvia remained unsatisfied with her successes, depressed, and disappointed, leading her to attempt to end her life by swallowing sleeping pills in 1953. As an adult, Sylvia married, divorced, and had two children. However, her severe depression lingered and finally drove her to commit suicide on the morning of   February 11, 1963. During her life, Sylvia published a novel, The Bell Jar and won many awards in her field - she is considered an excellent writer.


        I would not recommend Sylvia Plath : A Biography to others, and I did not enjoy it. First of all, this biography is not interesting as a reading book. Although it is very detailed and would be helpful for research or for one wanting to study the life of Sylvia Plath, it did not seem anything more than a factual depiction of a writer's life, and it certainly was not exciting or stimulating in any way. Also, I thought many parts were slightly repetitive. Plath's feelings of depression, although they are important, were mentioned too many times, and her achievements, also equally important, were repeated too often. Although I did not enjoy the book's repetition and overly-detailed nature, I did enjoy reading about the true story of a famous and wonderful writer, Sylvia Plath.