Dieses Buch stellt eine ausgezeichnete, kluge Darstellung und Analyse von Leben, Werk und Ehe dieser beiden Schriftsteller dar.
Um beider Leben gibt es so viel Mythenbildung und Tragik, dass es wohltuend ist, dieses wertungs- und vorurteilsfreie, bestens recherchierte Werk zu lesen. Ich kannte wenig von Sylvia Plath und nichts von Ted Hughes. Die Autorin kann auch für Laien sehr gut darstellen, worin das Besondere an den Werken dieser Autoren besteht und durch Zitate aus den Gedichten illustrieren. Eine wirklich tolle Biographe. ( )

This is not a biography , its a life on its own.
I havent read a book as intense as this , the last book I felt strongly attached to was Gabriel Garcia Marquez: living to tell the tale, and this book really topped it.
why ?
at first glance you might think this will be totally dedicated to Hughes's life with Sylvia Plath on his own perspective.
well . . you are mistaken my friend.
I thought I knew Plath, even a little, to say she is a favorable poet of mine, an icon, though finished her life against God will and against the will of her loved ones.
but yet she is an icon, not because she sits beside Emily Dickinson on the american female poetry throne, but because she is Sylvia, a combination of lives in one person, a puzzle no one "but no one" would ever predict or solve.
this book was an attempt to solve Sylvia puzzle through Hughes window. this is the most literary productive marriages in the history of modern " or ever " world.
they wrote, published, gone mad together, until Hughes gone further mad and cheated on her . .
this is not a book of pointing fingers or looking for who's fault is it that Sylvia left this world on purpose .
the book tells their story, goes deep back in their pasts, present and future!
what really fascinates me about the book is its ability of being a regular reader book, as if you are looking to two normal people , unknown, but have issues , and reach the end of it with hughes death in 1998.
another aimed to reader is the literary critic, you will find poems detailed explanation, and other writings by the two writers.
You will get an understanding on why and when each piece was written.
the third approach is for psychological interested people, this is the last one of which I have realized, I bet there is even more.
you will be astonished on how much you "DONT" know about them, the writer made a great job, I couldn't believe the book ended, the ending music made me sure its done. Sadly I moved the headphone away and looked to the stained glass , gladly , shocked. . and loving the knowledge I gained , the books I am ought to buy . . and the life experience I lived and it wasn't mine . . .
( )

This book was not what I thought it was going to be. When the title involves the word "marriage" I expect a little more of the actual information about the marriage of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. Instead of actual events from there marriage, we get lots of literary analyses of how their poetry echoed and reacted to each other.

That's all well and good but this book leaves out huge amounts of actual details from the writers' lives. Even the discussion of the poetry was shallow because there was a wealth of work that Hughes and Plath that even I as an amateur Plath reader know of and found the omission of... interesting.

There is so much information about Plath and Hughes' actual life together that would have been nice to include in a book ostensibly about their marriage.

It's not a bad book but it's not great either. I am largely meh about it, sadly. ( )

As if we didn't need a new demonstration, we learn that poets' lives can be trivialized just as thoroughly as politicians' and actors' (or anyone else's for that matter). The Taylor/Burton of 20th century literature. PS -- he never got over her, as was only fitting. ( )

This was really interesting. I never knew anything about Ted Hughes, the man who was married to Sylvia Plath. I didn't know he was such a successful poet in his own right, he was the poet laureate of England at one point. Also I didn't know that the woman he left Plath for also killed herself. He never was able to shake the image of being "her husband" it followed him for the rest of his life. Really interesting guy. Seems to have hurt a lot of people without meaning to.