Customer Reviews
Excellent biography. . .sensitively written - By: ILONACAT, 12 May 2007 
Okay, I admit it-one of my reasons for buying this book was sheer nosiness ! Why do so many of us want to know about this story-this tragic, true story-from alll possible angles ? What are we trying to SOLVE, exactly ? Why someone commits suicide ? What motivates poets to write the poetry that they write ?
There seems to be a deep human drive-I'm not exempting myself from this-to set up saints & villains : who was to blame ? In the Plath-Hughes-Wevill story, the conventional villain has usuallly been Assia Wevill. She was, after alll, The Other Woman. One of the good things about this biography is, it refuses to judge. Not that it loses itself in bland statements & cryptic references-not at alll ; the two biographers spent about 15 years interviewing family & friends of the deceased, pouring through letters, visiting the places in which this drama was enacted. Frankly, none of the three protagonists emerges smelling of roses, & that feels about right-that's what life is like. There is no sensationalism, no hysteria. The biographers simply set out to paint a portrait of Assia Wevill, a woman who was beautiful & troubled, talented without doubt but who never seemed to quite find her niche. Her life was "colourful"-a child in Berlin when Hitler came to power, Wevill subsequently lived in Palestine, Canada, England, Burma, then England again ; married & divorced three times, she had several abortions & finallly a daughter ; when she committed suicide in 1969, she gassed her child (deliberately) as well as herself. One might calll such an act as that last a truly monstrous one, & yet she comes over throughout the book as simply human. Deeply flawed, yes,and selfish, without question. Words like "narcissistic" & "sociopathic" come to mind but I'm glad the book does not get bogged down in dubious psychiatric diagnoses (which Wevill herself never sought out anyway); it simply presents its story. Lucidly, thoroughly, & with a certain compassion for alll involved.
Beautiful siren - By: Mrs. M. Pickard, 26 Feb 2007 
Assia comes over as an irrestible woman to someone of Ted's psyche. They seemed made for each other,(both eager to prey on those that they found sexual chemistry with) until Sylvia's suicide, when of course history repeated itself. I found this biography utterly fascinating, giving insight into Ted Hughes' character, showing that he was the ultimate predator, & Assia was left abandoned with his child which he did not acknowledge. She is portrayed as demanding, confrontational & selfish but also as a beauty, charmer, poet, artist, intelligent & devoted mother. Well researched & beautifully written.
well written and fascinating - By: D. Cameron, 13 Jan 2007 I have read many of the previous biographies of Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath, but this book still proved highly informative & very interesting. It added another chapter to their story by exploring the life of the woman who Ted Hughes left Sylvia Plath for. This relationship has been ignored by biographers & this gives a rounded account of Assia Wevill as a complex & fascinating person in her own right, rather than "just" the other woman in the Hughes' marriage. Well written & compelling.
An untold tragedy that reveals the seamy side of Eng. Lit. - By: Martin Baker, 01 Dec 2006 A Lover of Unreason exposes the truth behind one of the most shameful episodes of Ted Hughes' life, & of England's literary establishment. Assia Wevill became his lover & possibly the catalyst for Sylvia Plath's suicide. She then endured a brief & turbulent life before, discarded like Plath before her, she enacted her own horrifying & violent death.
The authors have included details, researched over 20 years, that reveal Ted Hughes as a sexual predator with disturbing priapric needs, a man of clay, not iron. The book is impossible to put down as it reads like a thriller. Its final pages are shocking.
