Red Comet Audiobook By Heather Clark cover art

Red Comet

The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

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Red Comet

By: Heather Clark
Narrated by: Laura Jennings
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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 #1 New York Times Bestseller, Untamed
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century

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. Art & Literature Biographies & Memoirs Women Authors Literary History & Criticism
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Comprehensive Research • Insightful Analysis • Pleasant Voice • Compelling Biography • Evenhanded Treatment

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With the detailed inclusion of biographical, literary, and sociopolitical history including the anti-immigrant WW2, anti-democratic Cold War, and pervasive misogynistic tendencies in both US and UK, as well as specifics of the failings of psychological/psychiatric care during Plath’s lifetime, the biographer presents a massive document of an extraordinary life and tragic death. The pronunciation flaws of the narrator are utterly annoying. Repeated mispronunciations of “row” as in an argument (as opposed to row as in a boat), plus La Leche League reference pronounced “La Lekay League” as well as dozens of others, and the awful poetry readings are such a shame. This 45-hour piece could be cleaned up and become impeccable because the book is worthy of a perfect recitation.

Outstanding portrait of an entire era through a single life

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You don't need to be a hardcore Sylvia Plath fan to enjoy this audiobook, long as it is. I knew little about her and was completely blown away by her story.

Author Heather Clark's aim was to "trace Plath’s literary and intellectual development, rather than her undoing,” “to recover Sylvia Plath from cliché”, “to examine her life through her commitment, not to death, but to art.” In other words, the book focuses on her powerful artistry, rather than on her suicide, which sadly is what a lot of people know her for.

Plath was a prodigy who began writing poems at the age of 8. She gained recognition in a period in history in which female poets were generally overlooked. The book follows Plath’s progress through her work and the events that influenced it. There is an amazing amount of detail here from her diary, which makes the listening experience so much more immersive.

Clark writes about her subject from many angles, certainly from one of admiration, but is also unafraid to address Plath's excesses, such as her obsession with achievement. The poet struggled with mental illness, was hospitalized and given shock and insulin treatments, which scarred her for life. This biography suggests that such treatment, provided by male psychiatrists in what's described as "Eisenhower’s brutally conformist America", didn’t so much seek to alleviate Plath’s anxieties, but rather to punish her for breaking conventions and showing the kind of ambition that was then considered "unfeminine". This is all proposed very soberly, without a trace of sensationalism.

The biography also explores Plath's romantic relationships, including that with her husband, the celebrated British poet, Ted Hughes, the way that they inspired and complemented each other, but also the rivalry and contention that they shared. I was moved by their poetry and was left with a deep feeling of awe and a sense of beauty.

I think Laura Jennings' warm voice is perfect for the narration of this audiobook. She does a really wonderful job.

One of the best biographies that I've come across

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...since 1963. Past works about Plath and Plath's own posthumous publications have had to overcome the self-serving, deferential or vengeful perspectives and elisions of those who knew her or could use her. Heather Clark's is the first to give the detail and breadth to make some sense of this tragedy. In the last chapters, I felt anger and tears. I am certain if I'd known her, I'd have loved &/or hated Plath as those who knew her did.

This is the Plath biography the world's wanted...

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Sylvia Plath had always fascinated me. While studying for my BA in English Literature the small amount of Plath’s poetry that I was exposed to in the 1980’s was unremarkable to me, at the time, in its formality.
My thesis was on Faulkner (a writer Plath “never really understood”) thus my later reading of The Bell Jar literally shook and confused me! It seemed to be written by a completely different voice than the proper prose I had read a few years prior. The novel was nakedly visceral and violent yet heartbreakingly gentle, introspective and resonate.
I wanted to know who was this woman who blew up her life - maiming all in her wake - after writing her “manifesto” novel?
The Red Comet is written with an urgent unambiguity that is rare and present. Plath and the literary world she occupies begs to be examined as testimony to how the thin membrane of human civility can be stripped away in a moments notice be it in a relationship or on the world stage. I loved this book!

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” - William Faulkner.

Victors write History

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I liked including her poems but would have liked more. I especially would have liked the whole poem of “Daddy.”

The depth of the research that was done.

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