Rating: 
Summary: Little fleas have smaller fleas...
Review: ...upon their backs to bite 'em. Smaller fleas have smaller fleas and so ad infinitum.The Silent Woman is a book about another book (Bitter Fame) about a writer of books (Sylvia Plath). This review is a piece of writing about a piece of writing about a piece of writing about a writer. How much more convoluted and self-reflexive can we, as writers and readers, become? In my experience, when industries become this complex and rarified the harvest becomes ever more meagre and suspect. The Silent Woman is a mixture of grandly-delivered truths that have always been obvious (we can never 'know' the truth definitively, for example) and crumbs of gossip salvaged from the table at which Hughes and Plath critics have been banqueting now for over thirty years. I can't say I came away from this book knowing anything important I didn't already know about Plath or Hughes and I can't say I came away from it knowing anything I didn't already instinctively know about literature or life's epistemological problems. Strictly for students.
Rating: 
Summary: Despite Itself
Review: Despite itself, an excellent book on Sylvia Plath. Who knows the truth about the enigmatic, "silent woman" of the book's title? No one, perhaps, not even that woman herself, who was mixed up about the kind of poetry she wanted to write and about her destiny, even her citizenship was fluid. Although Janet Malcolm wrote this book to prick holes in biographies of Plath that seek to canonize her, she really sinks her teeth into Anne Stevenson's repellent and semi-authorized biography "Bitter Fame," which on its publication was widely seen as the Hughes' camo corrective to Plath hagiography. Malcolm finds out exactly what information Olwyn Hughes was willing to share with Anne Stevenson, and which slant was verboten, and the whole shameful affair, while not the superb intellectual condemnation of biography that Malcolm thinks it is, is stimulating on nearly every page. And in the process Malcolm tracks down and interviews some important people in the Hughes/Plath saga, and even makes room for Plath's most important critic, the UK theorist Jacqueline Rose. All in all, it's a mixed bag, and Malcolm is pretty repellent, but oddly enough it's exciting from start to finish.
Rating:
Summary: The final word
Review: If the intense animus that Janet Malcolm seems to inspire doesn't carry the day, this book should come to be seen as seminal an intellectual achievement as, say, "The Origins of Totalitarianism". Put simply, it is the final word on its subject - which is, of course, the act of biography, not Sylvia Plath or Ted Hughes. That Malcolm presents herself as a major figure in the narrative, that she sides with Hughes against Plath (she says so in precisely those words; unlike every other book that addresses the Plath story, the agenda here is explicit, not veiled), is not merely apt but crucial. This, she argues convincingly, is what every biographer does - only usually with less self-awareness and honesty. The point can't be stressed enough - especially as several reviewers here seem to have missed it. Malcolm is only interested in Plath and Hughes (both of whom are more compelling, in my opinion, for the doom-filled lives they led than for their sub-canonical verse) as an unusually illustrative example of the impossibility of "objective" biography. Was he a cruel philanderer? Or was she a neurotic harpy? Or both? Not only don't we know, Malcolm says, we *can't* know. Her argument, presented in crisp epigrammatic prose that is its own unique pleasure, seems to me unanswerable.
Rating: 
Summary: A good gossip, that's all
Review: If the intense animus that Janet Malcolm seems to inspire doesn't carry the day, this book should come to be seen as seminal an intellectual achievement as, say, "The Origins of Totalitarianism". Put simply, it is the final word on its subject - which is, of course, the act of biography, not Sylvia Plath or Ted Hughes. That Malcolm presents herself as a major figure in the narrative, that she sides with Hughes against Plath (she says so in precisely those words; unlike every other book that addresses the Plath story, the agenda here is explicit, not veiled), is not merely apt but crucial. This, she argues convincingly, is what every biographer does - only usually with less self-awareness and honesty. The point can't be stressed enough - especially as several reviewers here seem to have missed it. Malcolm is only interested in Plath and Hughes (both of whom are more compelling, in my opinion, for the doom-filled lives they led than for their sub-canonical verse) as an unusually illustrative example of the impossibility of "objective" biography. Was he a cruel philanderer? Or was she a neurotic harpy? Or both? Not only don't we know, Malcolm says, we *can't* know. Her argument, presented in crisp epigrammatic prose that is its own unique pleasure, seems to me unanswerable.
Rating:
Summary: great book on the biography and sylvia plath
Review: Malcolm has written a great book on the difficulties of writing a good and fair biography. She uses Sylvia Plath, and specifically Anne Stevenson's Bitter Fame as her example. What you get here is an interesting book that engages the reader and at times almost reads like a novel. The book is gripping and before you know it, you've finished it. Also, Malcolm claims to be on the "side" of Ted Hughes, but I still think she gives a fairly balanced view of the whole situation. But, this isn't a biography of Sylvia Plath. This is a biography of a biography.
Rating: 
Summary: Balance - not here!
Review: Malcolm's book is a compelling look at the process of writing a biography, as well as an interesting biography of Plath's and Hughes's relationship in itself. By examining the motivations behind Plath biographers, friends, and enemies, Malcolm comments on the process and biases of the biography genre, most importantly, the controversial Bitter Fame. In this book, we see the Hughes's sister shut out all biographers with a negative view of Hughes. We see Plath enemy Dido Merwin write a skewed tale about a Plath/Hughes visit. We see admirers of Plath's write scathing biographies blaming Hughes for the downfall of the Plath/Hughes marriage. What Malcolm attempts to do is to look at the union in a balanced manner, while exposing the motivations of the players in the Plath drama. She succeeds whole-heartedly in this excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling Look at the Biography Process
Review: Malcolm's book is a compelling look at the process of writing a biography, as well as an interesting biography of Plath's and Hughes's relationship in itself. By examining the motivations behind Plath biographers, friends, and enemies, Malcolm comments on the process and biases of the biography genre, most importantly, the controversial Bitter Fame. In this book, we see the Hughes's sister shut out all biographers with a negative view of Hughes. We see Plath enemy Dido Merwin write a skewed tale about a Plath/Hughes visit. We see admirers of Plath's write scathing biographies blaming Hughes for the downfall of the Plath/Hughes marriage. What Malcolm attempts to do is to look at the union in a balanced manner, while exposing the motivations of the players in the Plath drama. She succeeds whole-heartedly in this excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Malcolm's masterpiece
Review: Malcolm's characteristic interest, in all her books, is to examine the many sides in a typically academic battle regarding truth and viewpoint and show how the many people involved in the battle often shoot themselves in their feet by making self-servicing claims in their own defenses. Naturally, few things work better for this condition than the problematic of biography, and in the case of Sylvia Plath Malcolm found a humdinger of a topic. Most literate readers know about the basic facts of Plath's life--the marriage to Ted Hughes, his philandering and subsequent abandonment of her, and her suicide in 1963. On these basic signposts various biographers (and, more crucially, Plath's friends, family, and enemies during her lifetime) have hung all sorts of interpretations, to the point where a college classmate of Malcolm's, Anne Stevenson, agreed to write an unsymathetic account of Plath's life on behalf of Hughes and his sister Olwyn--and wound up devastating her own literary career by pleasing neither the Hugheses nor Plath's advocates. This is one of the most thoughtful studies of biography and its problems ever written, and shows the horrible things people can do to one another in the name of trying to "set the story straight."
Rating: 
Summary: The afterword to all Plath biographies.
Review: Not only does Janet Malcolm peice together the life of Sylvia Plath, but her famous persona that began to grow upon her death. From Plath's suicide to publishing rights and the immediate family, the process of why things have come about as they have - and clues to where they could go- are well documented in this book as her time on Earth has been by other biographers, giving home the parts that make American myth that is known as Sylvia Plath. Although at time, Malcom is sharp, overbearing and intrusive. She makes claims without sufficient facts, and some of the peices of the story are a bit scattered about the book, making it difficult to follow at points. But she explains why her facts are not quite complete. Malcolm also sneaks in a heafty dose of poison to the biography industry as well, making an example out of Plath and her family. This book is stricly for the Plath buffs-whether they want to love or hate Malcolm for taking this project- and for those interested in the process of the biography mill in publishing today.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Best Books on Plath and the Art of the Biography
Review: One could argue that The Silent Woman is nothing more than a look at the art of writing a biography, and why biographies are so unreliable. One could also view The Silent Woman as one of the best books written about Sylvia Plath to date, surpassing Bitter Fame and Chapters in a Mythology. Both would be correct. As the host of the Journals forum at BellaOnline, I found The Silent Woman an indespencable tool in writing my article on journals and why the online journal, like the biography according to Janet Malcolm, is so unreliable. Ms. Malcolm's book takes us through England and the US, trying to piece together the history of the Hughes/Plath marriage. Along the way, she makes some rather remarkable conclusions not only about the Plath marriage but about the biography itself -- conclusions which transcent genre and, in the end, talk about most biographical/autobiographical works, such as journals, and why we cannot always believe what we read. A wonderful, scholarly piece that everyone interested in literature, reading, or Ms. Plath's life should read.
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