Letters Home

Rating:
Summary: Sad
Review: Honestly, I don't know how to review this book. Sylvia Plath has inspired a lot of curiosity about her life since she committed suicide and left a mass of interesting poetry and bad prose in her wake. I will admit that she has intrigued, and still intrigues me. I just have to wonder about a few things: why would her mother publish this book of correspondence during her lifetime? Perhaps she was seeking to establish a view of her daughter as a real, breathing, doubting human being, not just as some kind of feminist icon (and if you believe Plath was a feminist in the modern, PC version of the word, just read her journals). I wouldn't doubt that; the bond between Aurelia Plath and her daughter was undoubtedly strong, though imperfect (as are all parental relationships). But these letters. . .perhaps they will be of interest to scholars in the future, excavating the mines of a minor 20th-century poet seeking motivations for some of her more famous poems. . .I don't know. I don't mean to belittle either Sylvia or her mother, but I don't know why this uninteresting book was published.

Rating:
Summary: From her own words to her own mother--a great collection
Review: Letters Home offers a great look at the unseen side of Plath--the side her mother was allowed into. Here, one can see the woman behind her works, and is allowed to travel with her during her scholastic years until her death. A very moving and personal view from in own words.