Rating: 
Summary: Most Decidedly, a Mixed Bag
Review: SYLVIA AND TED, a strangely designed blue-gray book with a flower whose petals are grasped by fish hooks on the cover, a short novel by one Emma Tennant, sat with multiple copies on the table of "drastically reduced books for sale" at a local bookstore. Interest in the poetry of Ted Hughes and also that of the last works of Sylvia Plath made me curious enough to buy it without much thought. And it sat on my desk for months until one rainy evening it served to usurp my time for about three hours of reading. It is a strange book.
Emma Tennant (despite her apparent connections with Ted Hughes) is a curious writer. In SYLVIA AND TED she seems more intent on creating an atmosphere for the odd love story between two poets than in committing a biography to paper. In doing so she succeeds on some levels. The book is divided into years of importance in the lives of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Assia Wevill - and in this manner she seems to be in awe of Michael Cunningham's THE HOURS, so intense is her exploration into the dark moods of each of these moments in time. And had she remained focused in this style then this book would have had a better chance at succeeding.
Tennant's problem is her self-indulgent verbiage, waxing literary in mythology and in symbolism that is more of a distraction than a significant modifier to the tale of two suicides over a single poet. To her credit she does manage a style of reportage that constantly keeps her in a position of close observer to the creative mind of Sylvia Plath. There is enough information about the disintegration of Plath's mind to make her suicide seem credible, no mean feat for a writer. But why include Assia Wevill from the very first of the book, weaving her in and out of the story at will as though setting Assia up a trope for all of Ted Hughes' well-documented assignations?
Quibbling? Perhaps. This is not the book to read for a biography of these well known subjects: this is a theme and variations on the lives of artists heavily weighted with poetically inclined diversions. It has its moments. Grady Harp, March 2005
Rating: 
Summary: GORGEOUS novel for those who love good literature
Review: The reviews below giving Emma Tennant's lyrical and lovely novel of the lives of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes low scores are clearly from Slyviaphiles with axes to grind. Yes, Emma Tennant dated Ted Hughes in the 1970s, but that doesn't make a whit of difference in her beautiful rendering of one of the last century's most celebrated love triangles. I savored every word and can't wait for the movie to come out.
Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't toss it in the bin fast enough
Review: This book is in spectacularly bad taste. The "fictionalizations" is spiteful, jealous, transparently vindictive, and very badly written. So much so it is almost laughable in places.The author does not appear to understand that slandering someone is rhetorically very difficult-- usually the reader will see through the attempt, and end up sympathizing with the one being slandered. She particularly loses credibility in her portrayal of Clarissa Roche-- presented in this book as an almost angelic presence in Plath's life, with no gray areas. By golly, look at that! The book is dedicated to Roche! Uhmmm.. just how stupid does she think her readers are? My benefit of the doubt points for both Plath and Hughes have skyrocketted.
Rating:
Summary: All fictionalization aside...
Review: This book is terrible, the words of Dorothy Parker come to mind (not to be tossed aside...).
But I won't utter them, I'd leave that to the author of this atrocity, who seems to think sickly flowery prose, name dropping, and every 2 paragraphs (rough estimate I had stopped counting after awhile) alluding to Greco-Roman mythology, makes a good writer...actually, make that she thinks makes a great writer, because it is painfully obvious she thinks she's the cats meow literary-wise. This book is total poop.
Near impossible to read as it is so laden with metaphors and overly descriptive tripe one must stop periodically to stop from wretching. If you're considering buying this book, don't do it, unless you are a fan of Emma Tenant's other work (which I wouldn't understand anyhow even if her writing had improved 100%)
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