KDL Recommends

Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath

ISBN: 031228375X

Title: Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath

Author: Kate Moses

KDL Description:

A fictional account of the last months of Sylvia Plath’s life and the painful creation of her Ariel poems finds her moving with her two children to London after divorcing Ted Hughes, who works to remind her about happier times.

Amazon Description:

Wintering finds Sylvia Plath on her own with her two young children, elated by a move to London and her newly completed poetry manuscript despite the collapse of her marriage to Ted Hughes. Yet within days her resolve is tested. She and her children fall ill. She crosses paths with Ted’s lover. And when she gives her poems to Ted to read, she is shaken by his reaction: He is not angry about her vicious mythologizing of their breakup, but stunned into silence by sadness and artistic respect. Sylvia realizes her poetic triumph has come at a terrible cost. Teetering at the edge of an emotional precipice, she sends Ted on a mission through England’s worst snowstorm in decades for items that she has imbued with the totemic power to put things right-apples, honey, and red curtains left behind at her country home. As Wintering concludes, Sylvia clings to the one thing she believes can save her: hope. Drawing inspiration from Plath’s life and poems, Wintering is a deeply felt novel about artistry, marriage, motherhood, and self-understanding.