Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes' Doomed Love

Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes' Doomed Love | Yehuda Koren, Eilat Negev | Fascinating look at an era

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Lover of Unreason:...

	Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes' Doomed Love Yehuda Koren, Eilat Negev Da Capo Press, 2006 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 25 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Enriching

I found Assia Wevill a spellbinding, quite moving figure and couldn't stop reading. And between her and Sylvia I grasped much more about women than I ever knew before. This book enriched me. I commend it to all readers, though it's much less about poetry than about why and how people -- especially two unique poets -- love and act. Assia becomes a green-eyed flame on the page. You wish you'd known her, though she'd be a tough friend to console through her choppy rhapsodies with Ted and miseries with Sylvia's ghost stuck to her. The authors are clear-eyed about Ted as well with his self-inflicted dooms and wavering recoveries.

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Fascinating look at an era

Not only is this book the story of Assia and Ted Hughes, it also takes the reader on a wonderful trip back in time to pre-Hitler Germany. I love biographies which tell not only the life of the main character but begin with the subject's "beginning", including parents and grandparents and the world they faced during their lives. This approach reveals the forces and influences which formed the main character; in this case, Assia. This is a tragic story - a story which breaks your heart by the time you turn the final pages. The writing is intelligent and informative without being pedantic and carries the reader along as though you are there on the journey with Assia. Never gets bogged down with theory or analysis - just unfolds as it happens to a beautiful, sad, bright woman with fatal flaws.

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Morbidly Fascinating

I have to admit I knew nothing of Assia, but bought the book because I was intrigued at the thought of how two women whose love for the same man would cause them to end their own lives.

I was immediatley taken by Assia as she was so strong willed and refused to conform. While married (several times) she had multiple lovers that her husbands were aware of and yet they stayed with her. Using their pain to inspire their poetry. And then she met Ted which lead to her undoing.

Assia Wevill...an Israeli Saint

I will admit I read this book for prurient reasons. I can't help but be morbidly fascinated with what a self absorbed narcicist Assia Wevill was. She not only was a serial adultress, but a murderer as well. She murdered her own daughter. What amazes me is how Yehuda Koren tries to steal a little of the Plath/Hughes limelight-glamour just to glorify Israel and the holocaust. As if just because Assia was half Jewish it condoned serial adultery, suicide, and murder. Again, she murdered her own daughter! Yehuda goes on about how women often can't distinguish between their children's bodies and their own, insinuating that Assia felt she was really only killing herself. I am a mother, and I find that impossible to believe. She was a vain, horrible woman and justifying her actions just because she happened to be half Jewish is insulting.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5

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