Syndetics cover image
Image from Syndetics

The last confessions of Sylvia P. : a novel / Lee Kravetz.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2022Copyright date: ©2022Edition: First editionDescription: 264 pages ; 22 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780063139992
  • 0063139995
Subject(s): Genre/Form: DDC classification:
  • 813
LOC classification:
  • PS3611.R387 L37 2022
Summary: Told through three unique interwoven narratives, this novel reimagines a chapter in the life of Sylvia Plath, telling the story behind the creation of her classic, semi-autobiographical novel The bell jar.
Star ratings
    Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)
Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number URL Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Book Book Bedford Public Library Fiction Fiction F KRA More online. Available 32500005523437
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The Millions Most Anticipated Pick and A GMA March Reads Pick

"Lee Kravetz has created a bit of a miracle, a plot-driven literary puzzle box whose mystery lives in both its winding approach to history and its wonderous story. It's a book full of ideas about inspiration and a love for language that translates across borders, physical and generational."--Adam Johnson, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Orphan Master's Son

"Captivating . . . . Part truth, part fiction, the novel is an ingenious addition to an ever-growing body of work about Plath that has helped make her an American literary icon."--Washington Post

Blending past and present, and told through three unique interwoven narratives that build on one another, a daring and brilliant debut novel that reimagines a chapter in the life of Sylvia Plath, telling the story behind the creation of her classic semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar.

A seductive literary mystery and mutigenerational story inspired by true events, The Last Confessions of Sylvia P. imaginatively brings into focus the period of promise and tragedy that marked the writing of Sylvia Plath's modern classic The Bell Jar. Lee Kravetz uses a prismatic narrative formed from three distinct fictional perspectives to bring Plath to life--that of her psychiatrist, a rival poet, and years later, a curator of antiquities.

Estee, a seasoned curator for a small Massachusetts auction house, makes an astonishing find: the original manuscript of Sylvia Plath's semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, written by hand in her journals fifty-five years earlier. Vetting the document, Estee will discover she's connected to Plath's legacy in an unexpected way.

Plath's psychiatrist, Dr. Ruth Barnhouse, treats Plath during the dark days she spends at McLean Hospital following a suicide attempt, and eventually helps set the talented poet and writer on a path toward literary greatness.

Poet Boston Rhodes, a malicious literary rival, pushes Plath to write about her experiences at McLean, tipping her into a fatal spiral of madness and ultimately forging her legacy.

Like Michael Cunningham's The Hours, Paula McLain's The Paris Wife, and Theresa Anne Fowler's Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, The Last Confessions of Sylvia P. bridges fact and fiction to imagine the life of a revered writer. Suspenseful and beautifully written, Kravetz's masterful literary novel is a hugely appealing read.

Told through three unique interwoven narratives, this novel reimagines a chapter in the life of Sylvia Plath, telling the story behind the creation of her classic, semi-autobiographical novel The bell jar.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers 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.)

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.

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.
    Bedford Public Library
    2424 Forest Ridge DR
    Bedford, TX 76021
    817-952-2350

    Mon. Wed. Thu.: 10am-8pm
    Tue. Fri.: 9am-5pm
    Sat. 10am-5pm
    Sun. 1pm-5pm

Powered by Koha