Book: The Last Confessions Of Sylvia P.

Author: Lee Kravetz

Publisher: Harper

Price: $25.99

This is a thrilling record of three lives moving like three concentric circles with a common touching point — Sylvia Plath (picture). This part-fiction, part-biography is modelled on the high priestess of modern literature and forces one to recall Possession by A.S. Byatt. Sylvia Plath and her untimely death have left behind a series of literary and cinematic recreations which, today, are further enriched by this latest addition.

Organised into nine “stanzas”, or “rooms” in Italian, as one of the protagonists of the novel describes, the narrative brings in a growing sense of doom or the closing of walls. It is told over three different timelines by three different women, all connected to Plath some way or the other.

The novel begins in 2019 with Estee, a 65-year-old master curator for St. Ambrose Auction House, who is faced with the final challenge of her career — determining whether a set of notebooks found in an attic is the original manuscript of Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, which was published under a pseudonym a few months before her suicide in 1963. The journey navigates through unexpected twists and turns as she unveils a personal connection with the poet.

The second narrative is the voice of Boston Rhodes, a pen name for the ambitious Agatha White (probably a poorly veiled allusion to Anne Sexton), from the letter addressed to her old poetry professor, Robert Lowell. This is the most “venom voice” that “cuts to the marrow of truth”. The seething jealousy that steadily drove her to undermine her literary rival is the most naked and real voice of this novel.

The third voice is based on a real-life character, Ruth Barnhouse, the only female psychiatrist at McLean Hospital who had used unconventional therapies to treat her patients, one of whom was Plath. That Barnhouse had a special relationship with Sylvia is well-known through the likes of The Bell Jar and the Letters of Sylvia Plath. Kravetz skilfully weaves the three storylines while exploring the mystery of Plath, her life, her death, and her poetry

The most fascinating detail for a lover of literature is the line of literary allusions strewn across the pages of this novel. Drawn from famous poems of Plath like “The Rival”, “The Colosus” or “Metaphors”, they are like hidden clues or unexpected friends woven into the narrative. The beauty of the allusions is that they form an integral part of the storyline.

The episode of the breakdown in 1953 as Plath enters McLean, where Barnhouse, the only female psychiatrist, nurses her back to health can be read as a standalone section or can take one back to The Bell Jar forcing one to travel between the novels, making The Last Confessions a perfect sequel to the semi-autobiographical work of Plath. The plot explores how Plath meets Lowell, a “mad poet”, regularly in residence at the hospital. Five years later, the concentric circle moves to take readers and Plath, now married to Ted Hughes, back into a workshop with Lowell where she meets Rhodes. Rhodes declares soon that “Sylvia was a success in all the ways I was not.” The unholy friendship between the two women makes one wonder whether Rhodes is “the Rival” of Plath. They are often joined by classmates, Maxine Kumin and George Starbuck, and the endless martinis in the Ritz-Carlton conjures a reckless world of an emerging group of poets similar to Parisian cafe culture. The slow-burning jealousy of Rhodes and the breakdown of the picture-perfect marriage of Hughes and Plath make one stay glued to the narrative.

The second, most consuming, narrative is that of Ruth. The vulnerability of the voice where the treated and treating are joined in inseparable bonds touches one to the core because of its rawness. The blackening of the pages of Finnegans Wake and Plath creating poetry via codes are also a subtle query into the reading technique of Joyce.

The weakest link is Estee. Her attachment to Plath is not as direct as that of Rhodes or Ruth. Estee’s character is obviously a spin on Esther Greenwood as the novel self-explains but her slip from the cool detachment of a master curator at the end seems far-fetched. The mutilation of a “three million” dollar property is hardly a character feature of a master curator. If anything it makes one wonder if Kravetz had a deadline to finish the novel.

Overall, The Last Confessions manages to capture a larger truth — the place Plath has come to occupy in the literary canon and how. “It’s the darnedest thing,” a bookseller says to Rhodes at one point, “but since her death, well, I guess Plath’s become iconic.” Plath remains an enigma. This novel further establishes it through a beautiful recreation of her tumultuous relationships and constant courtship with death.