Little Fugue

I got this book out of the library in March and I have been reading and rereading it up until today when I finally have to return it....but I'm buying my own copy here and now. I don't really care about Sylvia or Ted, but Anderson can write rings around most others: an authentic voice, vocabulary that makes my dictionary a necessity (like Thomas Wolfe's "Of Time and the River") but not in a pedantic way. You can fall in love with the English language again here, because it is in the hands of a master. Descriptions so well-crafted. This haunting, intricate novel captures the times, places, and people in a startling new perspective, and I lived through the 60's by the way.

Readers who are familiar with the Gwyneth Paltrow film, Silvia will probably find a lot to admire in this poetic, original and totally sprawling novel by Robert Anderson. The book basically takes up where the film left off - both including the scenes where Silva finally decides to gas herself, but this book goes much further than the film, portraying the troubles and disparate lives of the people that Silvia has left behind. Little Fugue is told from the point of view of Silvia's husband Ted Hughes, his mistress Assia Wevill, and a narrator named Robert, who is looking at the death of Plath from the perspective of his own life experiences in America. Silvia waits anxiously for Ted to return. She knows that he's a womanizer and she also knows that he's probably gone off to see his mistress, but it isn't until later in the novel when Silvia's voice is no longer that we finally meet Assia, and witness the narrative unfold from her point of view. Through both Ted, Silvia, and Assia the reader witnesses short snippets of their lives: We are brought into the heart of Sylvia's tragic desperation, of Ted's flailing self-absorption, of Assia's ultimately heartrending need, and her frantic efforts to make Ted feel better at Silvia's wake - to be the woman to him that she thinks he needs. Ted and Assia stumble through blackness days and years after Sylvia's death, with Ted struggling to come to terms with how little he knew of his wife and Assia jealously forging Sylvia's identity. Interspersed with Ted and Assia's story are Robert's experiences growing up in the sixties and seventies. He went to a New York City parochial school in 1962, and witnessed the 1968 riots on the Columbia campus, and a massive power failure in 1969. He also experiences the drug-ridden, counter-culture of New York in the 1970s and the AIDS epidemic of the '80s. Robert freely admits to his obsession with the poetry of Sylvia Plath, and to his extreme dislike for Ted, and his musings feel like an extended coming-of-age story that at times doesn't quite fit in. While the stories of the trio are linked by both tragedy and ambition, Robert continues to struggle with Ted and Silvia's impact on his life through the tumultuous events of Sept. 11. Herein lies the problem with the novel: Robert's narration, although interesting, sometimes seems like its from a separate novel, and at times his musings bare little or no resemblance to the lives of Silvia, Ted or Assia. There's also a problem with Anderson's style, which at times reads with such self-importance and literary clutter that it rapidly becomes tiresome and exasperating. The author often seems more concerned with the impressing the reader with his storybook dexterity, rather than writing a tightly plotted and entertaining narrative. The novel, however, does have some beautifully lyrical moments and the assembly of distinct voices and themes play off each other and then come together to a harmonious finale. The events portrayed