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Red Comet
- The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
- Narrated by: Laura Jennings
- Length: 45 hrs and 27 mins
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Publisher's summary
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
The highly anticipated biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art.
“One of the most beautiful biographies I've ever read." (Glennon Doyle, author of number one New York Times best seller, Untamed)
With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials, Heather Clark brings to life the brilliant Sylvia Plath, who had precocious poetic ambition and was an accomplished published writer even before she became a star at Smith College. Refusing to read Plath’s work as if her every act was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark considers the sociopolitical context as she thoroughly explores Plath’s world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her troubles with an unenlightened mental health industry; her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes; and much more.
Clark’s clear-eyed portraits of Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath’s suicide promote a deeper understanding of her final days. Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark’s meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over.
Critic reviews
A New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the LA Times Book Prize • A New York Times Notable Book • Named a Book of the Year: O, the Oprah Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Boston Globe, Literary Hub, The Times (London), The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, and The Times of India • Winner of the Biographers' Club Slightly Foxed Prize for Best First Biography
“Mesmerizing . . . Comprehensive . . . Stuffed with heretofore untold anecdotes that illuminate or extend our understanding of Plath’s life . . . Clark is a felicitous writer and a discerning critic of Plath’s poetry . . . There is no denying the book’s intellectual power and, just as important, its sheer readability.” —The New York Times
“A majestic tome with the narrative propulsion of a thriller. We now have the complete story.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
“An exhaustively researched, frequently brilliant masterwork. . . . It is an impressive achievement representing a prizeworthy contribution to literary scholarship and biographical journalism.” —The Washington Post
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- By Sara on 01-15-16
By: Vera Brittain
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Gathering Blossoms Under Fire
- The Journals of Alice Walker
- By: Alice Walker, Valerie Boyd - editor
- Narrated by: Aunjanue Ellis, Alice Walker, Janina Edwards
- Length: 22 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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From National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Alice Walker and edited by critic and writer Valerie Boyd, comes an unprecedented compilation of Walker’s fifty years of journals drawing an intimate portrait of her development over five decades as an artist, human rights and women’s activist, and intellectual.
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A must-read for any creative artist!!
- By amazonluver on 04-30-22
By: Alice Walker, and others
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Labyrinths
- Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl, and the Early Years of Psychoanalysis
- By: Catrine Clay
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Clever and ambitious, Emma Jung yearned to study the natural sciences at the University of Zurich. But the strict rules of proper Swiss society at the beginning of the 20th century dictated that a woman of Emma's stature - one of the richest heiresses in Switzerland - travel to Paris to "finish" her education, to prepare for marriage to a suitable man. Engaged to the son of one of her father's wealthy business colleagues, Emma's conventional and predictable life was upended when she met Carl Jung.
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Carl plays center stage
- By Sparrowhawk on 12-23-16
By: Catrine Clay
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House of Dreams
- The Life of L.M. Montgomery
- By: Liz Rosenberg, Julie Morstad - illustrator
- Narrated by: Susan Hanfield
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Once upon a time, there was a girl named Maud who adored stories. When she was fourteen years old, Maud wrote in her journal, "I love books. I hope when I grow up to be able to have lots of them." Not only did Maud grow up to own lots of books, she wrote twenty-four of them herself as L. M. Montgomery, the world-renowned author of Anne of Green Gables. For many years, her lifelong struggles with anxiety and depression, her "year of mad passion" and her difficult married life were buried deep within her unpublished personal journals....
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Home’o’dreams
- By Steve G. on 02-25-20
By: Liz Rosenberg, and others
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C.S. Lewis
- A Biography of Friendship
- By: Colin Duriez
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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An Oxford student of C.S. Lewis' said he found his new tutor interesting and was told by J.R.R. Tolkien, "Interesting? Yes, he's certainly that. You'll never get to the bottom of him." You can learn a great deal about people by their friends and nowhere is this more true than in the case of C.S. Lewis, the remarkable academic, author, popularizer of faith - and creator of Narnia. He lost his mother early in life and became estranged from his father, much to his regret.
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It's a Great Concept
- By James on 08-13-20
By: Colin Duriez
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Square Haunting
- Five Writers in London Between the Wars
- By: Francesca Wade
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Mecklenburgh Square has always been a radical address. Nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, these townhouses have borne witness to the lives of some of the century's most revolutionary cultural figures - many of whom were extraordinary women. United by their desire to experiment with new ways of living - and, therefore, of being - these authors and thinkers were trailblazers in their commitment to creative independence.
By: Francesca Wade
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The Voice is All
- The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
- By: Joyce Johnson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Voice Is All, Joyce Johnson - coauthor of the classic memoir Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac - brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac's French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider's vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road.
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Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
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Eleanor in the Village
- By: Jan Jarboe Russell
- Narrated by: Samantha Desz
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A captivating blend of personal history detailing Eleanor’s struggle with issues of marriage, motherhood, financial independence, and femininity, and a vibrant portrait of one of the most famous neighborhoods in the world, this unique work examines the ways that the sensibility, mood, and various inhabitants of the neighborhood influenced the First Lady’s perception of herself and shaped her political views over four decades, up to her death in 1962.
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Grabs your attention
- By Amanda Hodges on 05-13-21
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The Last Love Song
- A Biography of Joan Didion
- By: Tracy Daugherty
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 26 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, whom she met while the two were working in New York City, when Didion was at Vogue and Dunne was writing for Time. They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and cowrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction.
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Riveted for 1591 miles
- By Kaysi12 on 04-11-16
By: Tracy Daugherty
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Genius & Anxiety
- How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947
- By: Norman Lebrecht
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent volume, beautifully designed, is an urgent and necessary celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.
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Post-anxiety
- By Amaze on 03-27-20
By: Norman Lebrecht
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Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
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Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
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This Close to Happy
- A Reckoning with Depression
- By: Daphne Merkin
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction.
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I should be the last person to recommend this book
- By Mariaposa on 03-04-17
By: Daphne Merkin
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Lucinda Williams’s rise to fame was anything but easy. Raised in a working-class family in the Deep South, she moved from town to town each time her father—a poet, a textbook salesman, a professor, a lover of parties—got a new job, totaling twelve different places by the time she was eighteen. Her mother suffered from severe mental illness and was in and out of hospitals. And when Williams was about a year old, she had to have an emergency tracheotomy—an inauspicious start for a singing career. But she was also born a fighter, and she would develop a voice that has captivated millions.
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Someone should have told her
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What listeners say about Red Comet
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kathleen
- 02-27-21
One of the most remarkable biographies ever
This is a remarkable and well researched biography about the total personhood, daughter, woman, scholar, poet, wife and mother who was Sylvia Plath.
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3 people found this helpful
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- MERRY CLARK
- 12-21-21
Sylvia Plath was a great loss.
She would’ve been a great President, but her artistic sensibility probably would have gotten in the way, which is unfortunate. The most passionate, creative women do not usually choose politics as a field of endeavor. This is our ongoing loss as a civilization.
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- Maureen Ohalleran
- 01-13-22
This book stayed with me. Excellent listen!
I didn’t know what to expect with this book purchase, not knowing a lot about Sylvia Plath. I found it so interesting and sad. Although the book is really quite long, I didn’t want it to end. Makes me want to learn more about her and her work.
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- Sabrina Coryell
- 12-19-21
Brilliant
The narration was a bit robotic but other than that this was utterly compelling. Inspiring and timely work of cultural and literary analysis.
More like this please!.
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- Noway
- 09-12-23
Great book, poor performance
Excellent biography and literary analysis. Compelling and enlightening description of how politics and the prevailing view of a woman’s place affected the brilliant and ambitious Plath. The performance was awful: words mispronounced often, such as the word poem consistently read as pome. Very annoying. I will never buy an Audible book read by this performer again.
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- ssmft
- 01-18-22
Outstanding portrait of an entire era through a single life
With the detailed inclusion of biographical, literary, and sociopolitical history including the anti-immigrant WW2, anti-democratic Cold War, and pervasive misogynistic tendencies in both US and UK, as well as specifics of the failings of psychological/psychiatric care during Plath’s lifetime, the biographer presents a massive document of an extraordinary life and tragic death. The pronunciation flaws of the narrator are utterly annoying. Repeated mispronunciations of “row” as in an argument (as opposed to row as in a boat), plus La Leche League reference pronounced “La Lekay League” as well as dozens of others, and the awful poetry readings are such a shame. This 45-hour piece could be cleaned up and become impeccable because the book is worthy of a perfect recitation.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Joselo
- 11-30-21
One of the best biographies that I've come across
You don't need to be a hardcore Sylvia Plath fan to enjoy this audiobook, long as it is. I knew little about her and was completely blown away by her story.
Author Heather Clark's aim was to "trace Plath’s literary and intellectual development, rather than her undoing,” “to recover Sylvia Plath from cliché”, “to examine her life through her commitment, not to death, but to art.” In other words, the book focuses on her powerful artistry, rather than on her suicide, which sadly is what a lot of people know her for.
Plath was a prodigy who began writing poems at the age of 8. She gained recognition in a period in history in which female poets were generally overlooked. The book follows Plath’s progress through her work and the events that influenced it. There is an amazing amount of detail here from her diary, which makes the listening experience so much more immersive.
Clark writes about her subject from many angles, certainly from one of admiration, but is also unafraid to address Plath's excesses, such as her obsession with achievement. The poet struggled with mental illness, was hospitalized and given shock and insulin treatments, which scarred her for life. This biography suggests that such treatment, provided by male psychiatrists in what's described as "Eisenhower’s brutally conformist America", didn’t so much seek to alleviate Plath’s anxieties, but rather to punish her for breaking conventions and showing the kind of ambition that was then considered "unfeminine". This is all proposed very soberly, without a trace of sensationalism.
The biography also explores Plath's romantic relationships, including that with her husband, the celebrated British poet, Ted Hughes, the way that they inspired and complemented each other, but also the rivalry and contention that they shared. I was moved by their poetry and was left with a deep feeling of awe and a sense of beauty.
I think Laura Jennings' warm voice is perfect for the narration of this audiobook. She does a really wonderful job.
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- Mao Dom
- 11-06-21
This is the Plath biography the world's wanted...
...since 1963. Past works about Plath and Plath's own posthumous publications have had to overcome the self-serving, deferential or vengeful perspectives and elisions of those who knew her or could use her. Heather Clark's is the first to give the detail and breadth to make some sense of this tragedy. In the last chapters, I felt anger and tears. I am certain if I'd known her, I'd have loved &/or hated Plath as those who knew her did.
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- Jack
- 12-01-23
The depth of the research that was done.
I liked including her poems but would have liked more. I especially would have liked the whole poem of “Daddy.”
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- Tammy
- 07-25-21
Read Red Comet
A good, long journey through the life and work of Sylvia Plath. An intimate, detailed accounting of one of our greatest poets.
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