kamilah

The author really likes the word "travesty," and that's what this book is: a travesty of an epic novel about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. It's been awhile since I've forced myself to finish an awful book, and I'm amazed that a fictionalized tale of the fascinating lives of those two could be so weak. Ironically, the flowing, almost stream of conscious, narration gave the sense that things are moving when almost nothing happens in this 600-page book. A man dies. His heirs fight. All of them are extreme caricatures of real human beings, who whine and behave hysterically, without evoking a single reason why anyone should care about them.