A review by linda48
Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton by Gail Crowther
4.0
Disclaimer: I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway.
Actually, the rating is 4 stars for students of the poets Sylvia Plath and/or Anne Sexton and 3 stars for general reading. Also 4 stars if you enjoy books about incredibly dysfunctional families.
Gail Crowther has presented an in-depth and very disturbing look at the lives of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, two poets who became casual friends but couldn't be more different. Sexton, the glamorous, dangerous woman, and Plath, the girl-next-door, bound by perfectionism woman. The tragedy of their suicides to their families and to the artistic world cannot be expressed by words. The damage done to their psyches by their families was more than they could bear and carried through into their art and their lives through their too-short adulthood.
It is apparent that both women were born too early, and the reader wonders how they would have fared had they been born in the late 1940s or 1950s. The restrictions on their lives by the societal expectations of women created tension in their personal and professional lives that added to the burdens of their troubled minds.
This is a sound scholarly work that adds to the knowledge of the lives of Plath and Sexton and how their lives intersected and ended.
Actually, the rating is 4 stars for students of the poets Sylvia Plath and/or Anne Sexton and 3 stars for general reading. Also 4 stars if you enjoy books about incredibly dysfunctional families.
Gail Crowther has presented an in-depth and very disturbing look at the lives of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, two poets who became casual friends but couldn't be more different. Sexton, the glamorous, dangerous woman, and Plath, the girl-next-door, bound by perfectionism woman. The tragedy of their suicides to their families and to the artistic world cannot be expressed by words. The damage done to their psyches by their families was more than they could bear and carried through into their art and their lives through their too-short adulthood.
It is apparent that both women were born too early, and the reader wonders how they would have fared had they been born in the late 1940s or 1950s. The restrictions on their lives by the societal expectations of women created tension in their personal and professional lives that added to the burdens of their troubled minds.
This is a sound scholarly work that adds to the knowledge of the lives of Plath and Sexton and how their lives intersected and ended.