Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath [Hardcover]

Jillian Becker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 2003

Giving Up is Jillian Becker’s intimate account of her brief but extraordinary time with Sylvia Plath during the winter of 1963, the last months of the poet’s life. Abandoned by Ted Hughes, Sylvia found companionship and care in the home of Becker and her husband, who helped care for the estranged couple’s two small children while Sylvia tried to rest. In clear-eyed recollections unclouded by the intervening decades, Becker describes the events of Sylvia’s final days and suicide: her physical and emotional state, her grief over Hughes’s infidelity, her mysterious meeting with an unknown companion the night before her suicide, and the harsh aftermath of her funeral. Alongside this tragic conclusion is a beautifully rendered portrait of a friendship between two very different women.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I met her after she and her husband Ted Hughes had parted. We quickly became friends but only for the last few months of her life. She was lonely, almost friendless as well as husbandless. The flattering courtiers had departed with the king." —from Giving Up

“Jillian Becker fits in more good sense and compassion on the subject of Sylvia Plath than books ten times as long.”—The Independent (London)

About the Author

Jillian Becker is the author of several novels and works of nonfiction, including The PLO and Hitler’s Children. She lives in England.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (May 12, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312315988
• ISBN-13: 978-0312315986
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,191,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #38 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( P ) > Plath, Sylvia

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A worthwhile addition to an unfinished life's memoirs, January 19, 2005

By 

PonyExpress (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath (Hardcover)

If you're interested enough in the life of Sylvia Plath-the life she mined so deeply and painfully in her unforgettable poems-to read more than one of the many biographies in print about her, I think this book, though obviously very slim-is a worthy addition to the reams of prose and supplementary material about Plath. And it is a *supplement*, not exactly a complete book in its own right. Not that there's anything wrong with that: Ms. Becker is a very different, very individual voice among the others who knew Sylvia, very much her own person-another writer, another mother, not a genius, but definitely a friend-and frankly, the sort of friend Plath desperately needed, and one we'd all be well-off to be able to turn to in despair, as Sylvia famously(well, it's famous *now*)did in the last days of her life. Some of the observations here, never repeated anywhere else, are indeed "haunting": the wearying task of sitting up all night with an emotionally disturbed girlfriend, at wit's end about exactly what to do; the unsettling visit of Becker to Plath's apartment to fetch neccessary items, finding the place eerily clean and apparently empty of children's clothes(Plath had two toddlers); the abrupt changes in Plath's moods, the memory of Sylvia, dressed to the nines, about to go out on the next-to-last evening of her life for a mysterious "date"(with her husband? with another suitor? We'll never know)stopping at the door to smile down at her baby son and tell him warmly, "I love you"-these are the sorts of observations that could come firsthand from only an intimate, if not a longterm friend. The memories regarding Ted Hughes' behaviour after Plath's suicide are something else again-quite a shock, and also quite believeable. You won't find much of that elswhere, either.

The thing about Plath memoirs and writings is that all of them seem to offer little pieces of the massive puzzle that was the poet and the woman. This is one more small piece that I'm very grateful was published.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting, May 24, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath (Hardcover)

A measured and moving account of Sylvia Plath's final hours, as well as a keen portrait of Ted Hughes's egotism and denial. Jillian Becker proves herself a loyal yet honest friend, even though her relationship with Plath was brief. I've already read this slim book twice. I find it haunting.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The last days of Sylvia Plath, December 26, 2006

By 

K. Hinton "avid reader" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath (Hardcover)

Best line: "Just as kindness is inadequate, and beauty hard to bear, happiness itself can be intolerable."

In Jillian Becker's Giving Up, she revisits the last moments she spent with her friend, Sylvia Plath. Her memories are solid at times and shaky at others, but she is quick to note when she doesn't recall an event in detail. Giving Up is only 73 pages and I read it in under an hour. Still, Becker's words resonate with the time and thought it took her to get to a point where she can write about her friend from the perspective of someone who shared her last moments. Becker mentions other Plath biographers who asked her to tell them her story, but apparently none did it to her satisfaction or with the degree of accuracy she felt was necessary, causing her to write this little book. As someone who is fascinated with the legend that Sylvia Plath's life and death has become, this book was fulfilling and full of useful information. However, it's not a novel, and Becker's views are definitely skewed to paint Ted Hughes as the bad guy in their marriage as well as the ultimate cause of Plath's untimely death (not a new notion, by any means, but I haven't seen it written before with such malice). That being said, I did think this book was worthwhile for anyone who likes Sylvia Plath and is fascinated by the mystery surrounding her life and death.