Red Comet by Heather Clark

Wow. The subtitle is The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath did not live an unexamined life, but the author of this so-heavy-you-can-barely-lift-it biography had access to materials from both the Plath and the Hughes family, and meticulously goes over every square inch of the poet's life. She was a gifted poet and a talented editor who was hampered by the time she lived in and the man that she married. The tipping point for her seems to have been her husband becoming publicly involved with another woman, and so he bore the brunt of the outcry when she killed herself--nothing in this tome lifts the blame off his shoulders. Plath had either major depression or possibly bipolar disorder, and tragically, had she lived another decade she would have had treatment options that were far more advanced than what was available in the 1950's and 60's, so it is all just a terrible shame. Her life and her work highlight the misogyny of her time, the limitations that placed on her in terms of options, and just how far psychiatry and the treatment of mental illness has come. No longer can you be locked up for not wanting to be a wife and a mother.