The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes: Amazon.co.uk: Janet Malcolm: Books

Amazon.co.uk Review

Sylvia Plath committed suicide in February 1963, and since then her poetry, fiction, and, increasingly, her life, have maintained enormous power over readers' imaginations. Biographies continue to appear with regularity, despite the strong hold the Plath estate has on her work. But because of that hold, each biographer has been forced to accommodate the living (Ted Hughes, who was separated from Plath at the time of her death, and his larger-than-life sister, Olwyn, long the executrix), often at the expense of the dead. In 1989, Anne Stevenson's peculiar hybrid, Bitter Fame, was published, complete with an appendix full of devastating memoirs. It was not your average biography. When Janet Malcolm was first sent the book, she was less drawn to it by the Plath legend than by the fact that she had known Stevenson in the 50s, but she soon became captivated by the book's defeatist subtext. The dead woman's voice and writings seemed to overwhelm Stevenson's tentative narrative; and if that wasn't enough, there was also the none-too-angelic choir of those who had known Plath. "These too, said: "Don't listen to Anne Stevenson. She didn't know Sylvia. I knew Sylvia. Let me tell you about her. Read my correspondence with her. Read my memoir."

Bitter Fame was soon garnering some powerfully bad notices, especially that of A. Alvarez in the New York Review of Books. Alvarez, the author of one of the most influential pieces on Plath, in his study of suicide, The Savage God, had some special, personal cards to deal, as have so many others Plath left behind. Because Malcolm's great theme is treachery--that of the interviewer, the journalist, the teller of just about any tale--the Plath mess seemed a perfect fit, and she decided to become a player, too. In 1991, Malcolm was having lunch with Olwyn Hughes in North London, 28 years to the day on which the poet died.

This is only one of the coincidences in The Silent Woman, a postmodern biography par excellence, which is less about the drama of Plath's life and still controversial death than about their continuing effect on the living. For Malcolm, all cards are wild, each one revealing more complexity, human cravenness, and, above all, brilliantly playful aperçus about human agency and writing's deceptions. I look forward to the dictionary of quotations that foregrounds the elegant "The pleasure of hearing ill of the dead is not a negligible one, but it pales before the pleasure of hearing ill of the living." And then there's: "Memory is notoriously unreliable; when it is intertwined with ill will, it may be monstrously unreliable. The "good" biographer is supposed to be able to discriminate among the testimonies of witnesses and have his antennae out for tendentious distortions, misrememberings and outright lies. It's clear that Malcolm doesn't see herself as a "good" biographer-- she openly declares her allegiance, but is more than capable of changing it and of showing her cards. Or is she? In the end, The Silent Woman, is a stunning inquiry into the possibility of ever really knowing anything save that "the game continues."

The Glasgow Herald

‘In this stunning polemic, Malcolm shows that it is not always the subject of a biography who is invaded’ --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

A touchy subject 31 July 2003

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Much has been written about the life of Sylvia Plath, to such an extent that her life has become a mixture of poetry, speculation and anecdotal evidence. This book takes the 'saga' of Hughes and Plath as an illustration of the difficulties behind writing a biography. It explores both sides of the argument, from the demonising of Ted Hughes by Plath's friends and fans to the loyal defence the Plath estate (at the time of writing, under the control of Hughes' sister) and especially Ted Hughes. Highly readable as a biography of the genre of biography. Malcom writes sympathetically of the subject, and remembers that in the end, Plath's death was a tragic event that Hughes and their two children suffered. This book is a lighthouse of logical and sensible writing amongst what can sometimes be a struggle to cannonise Plath against the backdrop of her evil 'seducer' and destroyer.

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

Brilliant read. 14 Feb 2006

By Sandra

I read this book in two days, it is so absorbing I could hardly put it down. If, like me, you have not read other biographies on SP it is an excellent introduction, combining an informal "gossipy" familiarity with the main characters with beautifully descriptive prose. I am now about to embark on reading some of the other works she describes, she has so enthused me with her subject that I now feel I almost "know" some of these people. A brilliant read.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful

Very well written investigative journalism. 9 Aug 2010

By Dave Stewart

This review ought to begin with one of the few, but main, criticisms I have of it: it's not a biography of Sylvia Plath or Ted Hughes. Now, it doesn't purport to be one in its outline, but the cover is misleading; it suggests a biography.

This book is a very well written piece of investigative journalism, which explores the difficulities and nature of biography as a genre, using Plath and Hughes as its framework to do so. It really is well crafted: exquisitely written but perfectly readable. 'The Silent Woman' is essentially a detective story, in which Janet Malcolm tracks down those who went before her in documenting their own realities of what became the controversial subject of Plath, Hughes, and their relationship. There is unique and fresh insight into the communication between parties involved, but very little in the way of new information on Plath or Hughes' lives - I would therefore not recommend it to anyone unfamiliar with the general story of Sylvia Plath as this book does assume prior knowledge of the reader.

The fact that this book is not a biography is most likely the result of its own findings: that Plath and Hughes' relationship is a puzzle that has never definately been solved, and there was more to be written here on the nature of the genre, rather than attempting yet another biography.