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 | Filling in the blanks

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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

The failure of the marriage between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes has always been considered from one of two conflicting viewpoints: hers or his. Missing for more than four decades has been a third perspective on the events that brought their marriage to its ill-fated end, the story of another?the other?woman: Hughes' mistress Assia Wevill. Like Plath before her, Assia shared her life with Hughes for seven years, until she took her own life and that of their daughter at the age of forty-two, in a manner that nearly replicated Plath's suicide six years earlier. Drawing on previously unavailable documents and private papers, including Assia's diaries and her intimate correspondence with Hughes, this book shows the vital influence Assia exerted on the poet and his work, and the uneasy life they shared under the long shadow of Plath. A Lover of Unreason is the first-ever full-length biography of Assia Wevill. It casts a keen light, and explores the emergence of a singular twentieth-century woman. Three-times divorcée, career woman, mistress, and single mother, Assia Wevill openly defied the conventions of a censorious pre-feminist Britain and mesmerized men and women alike with her quick-mind and exotic beauty.

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I was endowed with too many minor qualities

This is the first, full length treatment of the "other" woman in the Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes triangle. The authors present Assia Gutmann Wevill by availing themselves of documents, letters, journals and interviews, to present a complex portrait of this most unique woman.

In relevant ways, her story is part of the story of the Jewish experience of the 20th century. Assia was not able to fit into Jewish Palestine, and found it equally difficult to find a home in Canada and England. Even though she spent most of her life in England, she was never fully English. Zionism failed her, and with nothing to replace its failed promise, a crisis of identity appears to have set her life on a course of failed marriages and still born ventures.

But what amazes most in reading this biography is that Gutmann-Wevill never became an artist of any merit. One of the more enlightening elements of this book are her insightful and penetrating diary entries, quoted throughout. She had keen and relevant observations about her contemporaries, including two literary giants, Hughes and Plath. In her writing one can sense a voice of great clarity and vision expressing life with precision and accuracy. She never translated this into sustained, artistic endeavors. It seems her failure was self-realized. She wrote: "I was endowed with too many minor qualities, but neither the will or the huge intelligence to bring them a life of their own." She is being unkind to herself here. As this memoir makes very clear, it is apparent that her will was more impaired than her creativity or intelligence.

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Filling in the blanks

If you have read the poetry, letters, diaries and biographies of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, you may have longed to know more about the mysterious Assia Wevill who flung open the door into their lives three years before Sylvia committed suicide. This wonderful biography of Assia fills the gap, telling the story of this striking, exotic, gifted but ultimately deeply selfish woman. Born in Berlin, Assia and her family escape the Nazis to live in wartime Tel Aviv. Her story moves to Canada, colonial Burma, and ultimately to London. Along the way she marries and divorces three long suffering husbands and eventually bears a daughter to her lover Ted Hughes, who wrote of her "Assia was my true wife and the best friend I ever had" . His actions belied his words however and Assia's despair and disillusion with their failing relationship lead to the death of both Assia and her daughter Shura in an uncanny echo of Sylvia's own suicide.

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A Powerful Biography- not to be missed

I devoured Lover of Unreason in two days while on vacation. Wow! This is such a powerful biography of an unconventional woman whose reputation is that of the "other woman" in the Ted Hughes/Sylvia Plath debacle. But to write her off as merely that denies the rest of her fascinating life. Assia was far ahead of her time in terms of sexual freedom and could be considered a sort of proto-feminist. A fair amount of time is spent on Assia's childhood; enough to get to know where she came from but not too much that the reader becomes bored. She married several times for various reasons before falling into a relationship with Ted Hughes that would destroy her. In 1969 she committed suicide, taking her dear daughter with her. Terrible, yes, but reserve judgment until you've read the book.

Several reviewers have complained that Assia was cruel and heartless to have taken her daughter with her when she left this earth. But I would argue that Ted Hughes is the real monster. Having neglected Assia and almost completely ignoring their daughter, Shura; Assia was the only person in the world Shura had. In a way, by killing her daughter, Assia did her a great favor. Suicide is greatly misunderstood but I think the authors do a beautiful job of taking the reader along for the tragic journey.

Other reviewers have complained that they couldn't assign Assia a role. Was she a selfish, cruel, husband-stealer, or was she a brilliant, unappreciated soul? As with any character in a book, or person in life, complexity, contradictions, and depth are what make people interesting and likable or despicable. Assia had qualities of each. Instead of trying to define her into a neat square, try to let yourself be swept along on this journey of madness, genius, love, and of course, tragedy.

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so sad

this was a great read and lets you see inside of Wevill's head...makes you love her or hate her

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

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