Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes' Doomed Love by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev

 

Hello my lovely readers!

Welp. This book...man. I recently read Red Comet, which an extensive biography on Sylvia Plath. I'm pretty sure that when I bought it, I saw that there was a biography on her husband's mistress, so I bought that as well. It's not everyday you get a full biography on a mistress right?

The whole triangle between Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Assia Wevill showed just how messy and flawed human beings are, but whoa. I did not realize Ted Hughes was such a weasel. Let's get into it!

SUMMARY

The failure of the marriage between famed poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes has always been considered from three viewpoints: his, hers and hers. The other "her" in their marriage was that of Assia Wevill. The mistress. The homewrecker. The other woman.

Plath and Wevill shared parallel lives. Both were poets, both were lovers of Hughes for seven years. Both women gassed themselves to death. But the stark difference is that Wevill also killed her daughter. Who is Wevill? What is her story?

For the first time ever, we get a full-length biography on Wevill, a three-times divorcee, career woman, mistress, single mother and everything else in between.

MY THOUGHTS

After reading monumental and moving biographies of Sylvia Plath and Alain Locke, this one fell flat. The authors of the two previous biographies had a connection to their subjects (I assume it's because they were working on their books for nearly a decade). I felt like the authors of this book really didn't showcase any emotion toward Assia. It kind of read like a book report at times.

That aside, Assia was a hot mess and a very flawed woman. We're all flawed people, but goodness. Then throw in the weasel that is the married Ted Hughes and you have a recipe for disaster. He was an absolute menace and treated women so terribly. They last quarter of the book really dug into him and what a tool he was.

Now I have to get his biography! I can't just read the biographies of his wife and mistress and not know what his life was like. I want to know what makes him act the way he did. Even more, I'd LOVE to know how Freida handled everything...losing her mother and her "stepmother" Assia as well as her half-sister Shura, her father and eventually her brother Nick. I doubt we'll ever get that, but I'd love to know.

This biography did humanize Assia and her struggles and joy and relationships, which I think is admirable. It'll stay as part of my Sylvia Plath collection.