Red Comet

The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

By: Heather Clark

Narrated by: Laura Jennings

Length: 45 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

Pulitzer Prize Finalist

The highly anticipated 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.

“One of the most beautiful biographies I've ever read." (Glennon Doyle, author of number one New York Times best seller, Untamed)

With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials, Heather Clark brings to life the brilliant Sylvia Plath, who had precocious poetic ambition and was an accomplished published writer even before she became a star at Smith College. Refusing to read Plath’s work as if her every act was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark considers the sociopolitical context as she thoroughly explores Plath’s world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her troubles with an unenlightened mental health industry; her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes; 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 promote a deeper understanding of her final days. 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.

©2020 Heather Clark (P)2020 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

A New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the LA Times Book Prize • A New York Times Notable Book • Named a Book of the Year: O, the Oprah Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Boston Globe, Literary Hub, The Times (London), The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, and The Times of India • Winner of the Biographers' Club Slightly Foxed Prize for Best First Biography

“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.” —The New York Times

“A majestic tome with the narrative propulsion of a thriller. We now have the complete story.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“An exhaustively researched, frequently brilliant masterwork. . . . It is an impressive achievement representing a prizeworthy contribution to literary scholarship and biographical journalism.” —The Washington Post

One of the most remarkable biographies ever

This is a remarkable and well researched biography about the total personhood, daughter, woman, scholar, poet, wife and mother who was Sylvia Plath.

Sylvia Plath was a great loss.

She would’ve been a great President, but her artistic sensibility probably would have gotten in the way, which is unfortunate. The most passionate, creative women do not usually choose politics as a field of endeavor. This is our ongoing loss as a civilization.

This book stayed with me. Excellent listen!

I didn’t know what to expect with this book purchase, not knowing a lot about Sylvia Plath. I found it so interesting and sad. Although the book is really quite long, I didn’t want it to end. Makes me want to learn more about her and her work.

Brilliant

The narration was a bit robotic but other than that this was utterly compelling. Inspiring and timely work of cultural and literary analysis.
More like this please!.

Great book, poor performance

Excellent biography and literary analysis. Compelling and enlightening description of how politics and the prevailing view of a woman’s place affected the brilliant and ambitious Plath. The performance was awful: words mispronounced often, such as the word poem consistently read as pome. Very annoying. I will never buy an Audible book read by this performer again.

Read Red Comet

A good, long journey through the life and work of Sylvia Plath. An intimate, detailed accounting of one of our greatest poets.

Like being there

Only criticism is the narrator who was a bit robotic for my taste. There are many biographies of Plath, but if you want to read just one, this would be it.

lovely

More brilliant details added in each new biography — lovely all the way to the last words.

Wonderful!

Just an amazing story and told so well by the author. When I first picked the book up, I was wondering how it could possibly be 31 hours long to listen to and whether it would be worth all that time. I must say it was worth every minute and I’m so happy to have come across this book.

An amazing, electric and tragic life

For decades I’ve heard the name of Sylvia Path invoked on the pages of the New York Times Book Review and its podcast, only to wonder who this woman really was. Obviously, a woman of great influence among other writers. When Heather Clark’s bio of Plath was published it was time to finally to resolve this personal mystery.

What an amazing and tragic life. This book is both inspiring and heartbreaking and, despite already knowing how Plath’s life ended, the tension of waiting hundreds of pages for the final event was spellbinding. I also came to know Ted Hughes, her estranged husband, and the most popular British poet at the time, who, like Plath, also suffered from the dark moods of depression, though to a far lesser degree.

Plath’s college years at Smith were so auspicious, as her poetic talent developed and men were draw to this tall, vivacious woman by the dozens. Plath became a prolific dater and learned to resent the sexual freedom afforded to men but denied to women. Eventually it is Ted Hughes who becomes the enduring love of her life, albeit a tempestuous pairing. Hughes’ voracious sexual appetite leads him astray, and Plath’s fury and pursuit of vengeance results in a flurry of her most electric poetry, as well as a novel (The Bell Jar) that still sells about 100,000 copies her year and has sold a total of nearly 4 million copies since its 1963 release.

What an honor it would have been to spend some weeks with Sylvia Plath, but this sprawling and detailed recounting of her life by Heather Clark is the next best thing.