Title: A Textbook? A Study Guide? What is It? An Obscenity.
Product review: This is not the serious study guide to Plath's works that I expected. (I had been considering it as a possible college textbook.) It's a gamey 88-page volume of generalizations, paraphrases, and horrid little cartoon drawings of Plath (as herself and as Lady Lazarus -- in G-string and pasties!). Because the book can't quote more than five lines from any of Plath's poems, it paraphrases, which isn't the same as explaining how any one poem actually works. (The author says you must have the Collected Poems alongside.) It also contains proofreading errors and misinformation (Did you know Esther Greenwood was a 'country girl' and that's why she hated Manhattan?). Example of its prose: "The artist needs to fly the roles but she is tied down and a person." What a disappointment. Least offensive chapter: Chapter 7, a briefing on the critical reception of Plath's work.
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