Review by Booklist Review
First-time novelist Kravetz joins a list of fiction writers inspired by the dramatic lives of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, but his focus tilts more toward poets Robert Lowell and, covertly, Anne Sexton. In the present, Estee, a master curator at a Boston auction house, assesses three old spiral notebooks found in an attic by flashy fix-and-flip real-estate agents. In the 1950s, Agatha White, a frustrated suburban wife and mother determined to become a poet, grandstands her way into Lowell's prestigious writing workshop.When revered Plath joins the group, Agatha considers her a rival, while both Lowell and Plath are under the care of innovative psychiatrist Dr. Ruth Barnstone. Estee, Agatha (whose confessional poetry is so shocking her husband insists that she write under a pseudonym), and Ruth are each fighting against dark and treacherous psychic undertows. These fictionalized real-life characters could have inspired a deep inquiry into creativity and madness, poetry and survival. Instead, Kravetz, a magnetizing storyteller with a satiric wit, has crafted an incisive, suspenseful, and head-spinning tale of the perils of artistic obsession, coveted objects, ferocious ambition, and tragic betrayal.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist and psychotherapist Kravetz (Strange Contagion) makes an engrossing fiction debut with an account of Sylvia Plath and her circle of confessional poets. Estee, a master curator at a struggling auction house in present-day Boston, is nearing retirement when she is handed what proves to be an authentic, handwritten draft of The Bell Jar. Kravetz then takes readers back to the 1950s, where a fictional female writer using the pseudonym Boston Rhodes enrolls in Robert Lowell's poetry workshop along with Plath, Anne Sexton, Maxine Kumin, and others. Rhodes, obsessively competitive, resorts to blackmail, theft, and plagiarism to eclipse Sylvia, her chief rival. A third narrative comes from Dr. Ruth Barnhouse, the young psychiatry resident at the McLean Hospital who treated Plath for depression and remained the poet's friend and confidante but was unable to prevent her eventual suicide. The author creates a taut air of tension to the auction house, where the restrained Estee feels disarmed by a young, media-savvy colleague, and delves deeply into the guilt carried by the poets who studied and competed with Plath, including Rhodes, and by the regretful Barnhouse, whose story traces the mental institution's slow evolution toward more humane, enlightened therapeutic practices. Kravetz brings both authority and empathy to his depictions of mental illness. He also reveals himself to be a fine novelist. (Mar.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Nonfiction author Kravetz's debut novel is a compelling literary mystery that explores the creation of poet Sylvia Plath's only novel. Organized into nine "stanzas," or sections, the narrative is told over three different timelines by three different women, all connected in some way to Plath. In 2019, Estee, a 65-year-old master curator for a small Boston auction house, must determine whether a set of notebooks found in the attic of a South Boston Victorian is the original manuscript of Plath's semiautobiographical The Bell Jar, published under a pseudonym a few months before her suicide in 1963. As she vets the documents with the assistance of Plath expert Nicolas Jacob, Estee discovers an unexpected personal connection to the poet. Covering the years 1958 to 1963 in a letter addressed to her old poetry professor Robert Lowell, Boston Rhodes, a pen name for the ambitious Agatha White (a thinly veiled Anne Sexton), recounts the seething jealousy that drives her to undermine her literary rival. "Sylvia was a success in all the ways I was not," she notes acidly. In 1953, Ruth Barnhouse, the only female psychiatrist at McLean Hospital, uses unconventional therapies to treat her patients, one of whom is a Miss Plath recovering from a failed suicide attempt. Kravetz skillfully weaves the three storylines into a satisfying whole as the mystery of Plath's journals is resolved. Writing about real literary figures can be tricky, especially if their descendants are still living, but the author brings his characters, both imagined and historical, to life with sensitivity. Of his protagonists, Rhodes is the standout, an unreliable narrator nonpareil whose inner "venom voice…cuts to the marrow of truth." An elegantly written novel for lovers of poetry and literary history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
