Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes' Doomed Love (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Eilat Negev (Author) "Times were changing, and Ephraim Gutmann turned a blind eye when his son found all sorts of excuses not to accompany him to the synagogue..." (more)
Key Phrases: letter exchange, hospitality committee, flat number, Court Green, Tel Aviv, David Wevill (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The "other woman" in the Sylvia Plath–Ted Hughes divorce receives long-delayed consideration in this assiduously researched, compulsively readable biography, where the authors draw on newly revealed primary sources. The life of thrice-married Assia Wevill (1927–1969) makes a fascinating story even before her six-year affair with Hughes and the birth of his (unacknowledged) daughter, Shura. Born in Berlin of a Russian Jewish father and a German Lutheran mother, raised in Tel Aviv, married to a British soldier in order to gain a British passport, Assia was, as the authors demonstrate, a smoldering femme fatale, albeit highly intelligent, witty and talented. While Koren and Negev (In Our Hearts We Were Giants: The Remarkable Story of the Lilliput Troupe) don't whitewash Assia's volatile, self-absorbed personality or her serial adulteries, they do contradict the widespread impression that Assia was the initial seducer of Hughes. This will be an important book for Hughes scholars, primarily for the authors' exclusive 1996 interview with the poet, in which he identified the poems he wrote alluding to Assia after her death, which he felt no critic had ever interpreted correctly. Newly revealed letters and interviews reinforce previous accounts of Hughes's sexual attraction and the dedicated philandering that drove two women to suicide. Photos. (Jan. 23)
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From Booklist

The adventurous biographical duo Koren and Negev follow their unusual Holocaust tale, In Our Hearts We Were Giants (2004), with the first complete biography of one of literature's most shadowed figures. The tragic story of Sylvia Plath's marriage to Ted Hughes and subsequent suicide has been assiduously analyzed after the story of the second catastrophic relationship in Hughes' life of many love affairs finally emerged. He and Plath broke up for many painful reasons, but the catalyst was the dramatically beautiful Assia Weevil. Little has been widely known about this bright, artistic, magnetically attractive, and, finally, devastated woman of Russian Jewish and German Lutheran blood and numerous entanglements, or the nature of her tumultuous seven-year relationship with Hughes and her influence on his work, or Hughes' feelings toward their daughter. Koren and Negev, privy to previously unavailable sources, sensitively synthesize a cache of volatile information to create a fully dimensional and deeply disconcerting portrait of Weevil, who committed suicide in 1969 in the same manner as Plath but took her young daughter with her. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (December 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786718617
• ISBN-13: 978-0786718610
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #569,089 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fine addition to the wealth of material available about Plath and Hughes, February 28, 2008

By	beckyjean "beckyjean" (East Granby, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes' Doomed Love (Paperback)

Finally, the story of Assia Gutmann Wevill is told, and what a story it is. The life of the "other woman" in the mythic marriage of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes seems eerily like the life of Plath herself. Even the excerpts from Wevill's journals sound -- in tone, style, and content -- like they could have been ripped from Plath's own journals.

I have studied Plath's life and work for a long time, so I am always interested in any new material that is brought to light. The authors have done a fine job with this book. I have read their previous book, "In Our Hearts We Were Giants," which was well-researched and interesting, but I believe their book about Assia Wevill is more well-written; I could barely put it down.

And I have to admit -- after reading Diane Middlebrook's excellent biography of Ted Hughes, "Her Husband," I gained quite a bit of understanding and sympathy for Mr. Hughes. The biography of Assia Wevill, however, negated all of that. I will be interested to reread "Her Husband," and see if I regain any of that feeling.

And now they are all gone, all of these unbelievably intense, brilliant people, so heavily laden with self, self, self. It's likely we'll never know the truth about how everything went down. And down and down, until everybody was dead.

The saddest thing of all is the murder of Shura Wevill, four years old and innocent of everything.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating look at an era, March 8, 2007

By	J. Johnson "Biography Lover" (San Francisco Bay Area) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Not only is this book the story of Assia and Ted Hughes, it also takes the reader on a wonderful trip back in time to pre-Hitler Germany. I love biographies which tell not only the life of the main character but begin with the subject's "beginning", including parents and grandparents and the world they faced during their lives. This approach reveals the forces and influences which formed the main character; in this case, Assia. This is a tragic story - a story which breaks your heart by the time you turn the final pages. The writing is intelligent and informative without being pedantic and carries the reader along as though you are there on the journey with Assia. Never gets bogged down with theory or analysis - just unfolds as it happens to a beautiful, sad, bright woman with fatal flaws.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enriching, January 24, 2007

By	Donald A. Newlove (Greenwich Village NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I found Assia Wevill a spellbinding, quite moving figure and couldn't stop reading. And between her and Sylvia I grasped much more about women than I ever knew before. This book enriched me. I commend it to all readers, though it's much less about poetry than about why and how people -- especially two unique poets -- love and act. Assia becomes a green-eyed flame on the page. You wish you'd known her, though she'd be a tough friend to console through her choppy rhapsodies with Ted and miseries with Sylvia's ghost stuck to her. The authors are clear-eyed about Ted as well with his self-inflicted dooms and wavering recoveries.