Order:
* Best Book of 2020 by Oprah Magazine, Barnes & Noble, Lit Hub, The Guardian, Entertainment Weekly, Bookmarks, A Mighty Girl, The Times (London), The Times of India, The Daily Telegraph, Open Letters Review, and the Good Morning America Book Club*
* Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
* Winner of the Slightly Foxed Prize for Best First Biography
*Shortlisted for the LA Times Book Prize in Biography
* Named a Fall Book to Read by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Literary Hub, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Minneapolis Star Tribune, USA Today, AARP, The Christian Science Monitor, and Entertainment Weekly*
The highly anticipated new biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art.
With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials–including unpublished letters and manuscripts; court, police, and psychiatric records; and new interviews–Heather Clark brings to life the brilliant daughter of Wellesley, Massachusetts who had poetic ambition from a very young age and was an accomplished, published writer of poems and stories even before she became a star English student at Smith College in the early 1950s. Determined not to read Plath’s work as if her every act, from childhood on, was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark evokes a culture in transition, in the shadow of the atom bomb and the Holocaust, as she explores Plath’s world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her conflicted ties to her well-meaning, widowed mother; her troubles at the hands of an unenlightened mental-health industry; her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes, a marriage of true minds that would change the course of poetry in English; and much more. Clark’s clear-eyed portraits of Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath’s suicide promotes a deeper understanding of her final days, with their outpouring of first-rate poems. Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark’s meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over.
Reviews
“Heroic…Red Comet achieves the remarkable: It’s a majestic tome with the narrative propulsion of a thriller. We now have the complete story.” –Oprah Magazine
“A definitive biography . . . What ultimately bursts off the page is Plath’s short, vibrant life, which is too often most remembered for the way it ended: ‘That’s the irony, isn’t it?’ says Clark. ‘She’s so incredibly alive.’” —Mary Sollosi, Entertainment Weekly
“This is one of the most beautiful biographies I’ve ever read.” —Glennon Doyle, Good Morning America Book Club
“Mesmerizing . . . Comprehensive . . . Stuffed with heretofore untold anecdotes that illuminate or extend our understanding of Plath’s life . . . Clark is a felicitous writer and a discerning critic of Plath’s poetry . . . There is no denying the book’s intellectual power and, just as important, its sheer readability.” —Daphne Merkin, The New York Times
“A joyful affirmation for Plath fanatics and a legitimization of her legacy . . . It isn’t just modern hindsight that renders Red Comet uniquely complete: it’s old sources newly procured . . . Only in a biography this comprehensive can you get a sense of her intense trajectory and the transcendent achievement that is her poetry . . . Clark masterfully analyzes the poetry with intelligent incorporation of the biography.” —Jessica Ferri, Los Angeles Times
“Aiming to shake the public perception of Sylvia Plath as ‘the Marilyn Monroe of the literati,’ Clark delivers a meticulous, unflinching and fresh view of the brilliant, troubled poet.” —People
“An impressive achievement representing a prizeworthy contribution to literary scholarship and biographical journalism.” —Paul Alexander, The Washington Post
“[Red Comet] does not so much seek to correct the record as establish it in the first place . . . In the past, Plath has often been read and written about as anomalous, a mad poet fallen from a cold star to land briefly among the living. Red Comet insists on her as a woman of her time . . . [It] is alive with Plath’s countless dates, love affairs, and general escapades.” —Emily Van Duyne, Literary Hub
“Surely the final, the definitive, biography of Sylvia Plath . . . Takes its time in desensationalizing the life and the art; this lets Clark place both firmly in the literary and politically engaged contexts that formed them and simultaneously demonstrate how Plath’s work, in return, gifted the writing life unimaginable new sinew.” —Ali Smith, The Guardian (“The Best Books of 2020”)
“Plath was much more than the worshipping fangirl she seems in this moment. As Clark’s meticulous research reveals, she was a woman who took herself and her poetry seriously.” —Rafia Zakaria, The Baffler
“Revelatory . . . Plath’s struggles with depression and her marriage to Ted Hughes emerge in complex detail, but Clark does not let Plath’s suicide define her artistic achievement, arguing with refreshing rigor for her significance to modern letters. The result is a new understanding and appreciation of an innovative, uncompromising poetic voice.” —The New Yorker
” A clearer and more comprehensive account of Plath’s life than any that have appeared before…’Red Comet’ feels bracingly free of old grievances and shopworn vindications. It’s the big, generous biography Plath has always deserved.” —Steve Donoghue, Christian Science Monitor
“Clark lifts the poet’s life from the Persephone myth it has become and examines it in all its complexity…[Her] detailed, multidimensional treatment gives Plath’s life and work its dignity, character and sense of interiority. We get the full scope of Plath’s incredible talent here, rightfully established as complicated, radiant and worthy of deep consideration. Plath was a genius [and] Red Comet allows [her] to emerge from the shadows, shining in all her intricacy and artistry.” —Anna Spydell, BookPage (starred review)
“A terrific, even-handed biography . . . After more than half a century of occlusion, the time has come to see Plath emerge now into the full daylight of her immortality . . . [Clark] deftly integrates drafts, unpublished pieces, stories and critiques of poems. To demythologize Sylvia Plath is to make this extraordinary story more moving than ever. It will bring home to readers the enduring force of her ‘song.’” —Lyndall Gordon, The Daily Telegraph
“Remarkable . . . Clark’s approach is unfailingly compassionate, respectful, and honest—about the circumstances of Plath’s life and death, the characters that surrounded her, and the work that made her one of our most important poets . . . To witness [Plath] through this work is a privilege.” —Corinne Segal, Literary Hub
“The full, complex scope of poet Sylvia Plath’s life and writing is given a bracingly thought-provoking reexamination in this massive – and massively absorbing – biography.” –Christian Science Monitor
“Heather Clark’s meticulous research, sweeping up every scrap, deftly integrates drafts, unpublished pieces, stories and critiques of poems. To demythologise Sylvia Plath is to make this extraordinary story more moving than ever. It will bring home to readers the enduring force of her “song”. –Daily Telegraph (UK)
“[A] first-class biography . . . A mighty achievement. Clark is compassionate, clear-eyed, skeptical. Each chapter reads with the ease of a novel. You feel the smart of every rejection letter, share Plath’s elation in each published poem, read the recreation of her first suicide attempt with a tightening chest and reel through the night when she met Ted Hughes with drunken exultance. I couldn’t put it down . . . Plath’s resilience, genius and insight blaze through the book . . . This is a vast and heartbreaking book. I would not have wished it shorter.” —Laura Freeman, The Times (London)
“Red Comet is the kind of serious literary biography Plath has long deserved but, until now, not received. By drawing on an enormous body of research (including Harriet Rosenstein’s recently rediscovered work, and a fragmentary draft of an unfinished novel discovered by Clark), and layering frequently contradictory accounts, Clark assembles a fuller and more complicated picture of Plath than any biographer.” –New Statesman
“This vast new biography sets out to recover Plath from her melodramatic legacy. Her life story — from her institutionalizations to her tempestuous marriage to Ted Hughes — has often been reduced to that of a depressive, literary femme fatale, which Clark believes ignores the poet’s true genius. Her book draws on all of Plath’s surviving letters and incorporates part of an unfinished novel, “Falcon Yard.” Plath’s poem “Stings” is a fitting epigraph for the project: “They thought death was worth it, but I / Have a self to recover, a queen.” –New York Times
“This expansive (1,100-page!) biography of Sylvia Plath looks deep into her brilliant life for an empathetic portrait of an American visionary.” –Entertainment Weekly
“This meticulously researched and lengthy biography of a much-romanticized poet promises to paint the full portrait of a complex woman and her remarkably literary achievements.” –USA Today
“Red Comet illuminates one of our most haunting poets.” –Boston Globe
“A remarkable, 1,152 page-long biography, constructed from meticulous detail and drawing on material that researchers have never accessed before . . . . Clark’s approach is unfailingly compassionate, respectful, and honest—about the circumstances of Plath’s life and death, the characters that surrounded her, and the work that made her one of our most important poets. . . . To witness her through this work is a privilege.” –Lit Hub
“Clark offers a page-turning, meticulously researched biography of Sylvia Plath. Clark’s in-depth scholarship and fine writing result in a superb work that will deliver fresh revelations to Plath’s many devoted fans.” –Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“A major biography that redeems Plath from the condescension of easy interpretation.” –Kirkus
“Finally, the biography that Sylvia Plath deserves, one that takes her seriously as both a poet and a person. Combining rigorous research with in-depth literary analysis and immersive style, Heather Clark’s magisterial book not only traces Plath’s influences and inspirations, but also chronicles her often-tumultuous relationships with respect and empathy. A spectacular achievement.” –Ruth Franklin, author of Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
“An exciting contribution not only to Plath studies but to biography, poetics, cultural history, and feminist history and theory, Red Comet is an extraordinary book. Clark animates Plath anew, both through the very dailiness of her life—rendered gripping and engrossing—and through the brilliant situating of Plath (and her stormy marriage to Ted Hughes) in the larger, indelibly evoked Anglo-American poetic context. Clark delivers a brilliant scholarly exegesis in vivid prose that renders Plath’s life into art. This is the major biography of this major poet that we have long awaited.” –Mary V. Dearborn, author of Ernest Hemingway: A Biography
“Once I started reading this book, I couldn’t stop; I read it upon waking and late at night, at the dinner table and during the workday. I thought I knew Plath, but this wonderful book shows me I did not. Like the lyric speakers of her late poetry, she emerges from these pages transformed. Red Comet presents Sylvia Plath as she ought to be: as an innovative, ambitious, driven artist, at a time when women weren’t supposed to be any of these things. In the end, I was awestruck by Plath’s courage and strength in the face of so many obstacles; I was awed, too, by the work Clark has done to bring this writer to life.” –Maggie Doherty, author of The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s
“With Red Comet Heather Clark has produced a superb biography, scholarly, acutely perceptive and beautifully written. She shows a profound understanding not only of Plath and her work, but also of the worlds she inhabited on both sides of the Atlantic. This is without doubt one of the most remarkable biographies of the present era.” –Selina Hastings, author of The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham