From Publishers Weekly
This exceptional first novel, shot through with a fierce poetic luminosity that almost matches that of Moses's much-written-about subject, covers the last few months of the poet's life as she cares for her sick children in the middle of a brutal London winter, struggling to write her last poems and recover from the defection of husband Ted Hughes. Moses is frank, in a long afterword, about her sources-which include Plath's letters and journals-and about what she has made up or merely surmised. But the key question is whether the book succeeds as a compelling piece of fiction, and the answer is that it does, triumphantly. Moses moves deftly back and forth in time, from the couple's last months in their beloved but moldering Devonshire hideaway through Plath's first suspicions of Hughes's infidelities to her arrival in London. Moses catches the quality of English life, particularly its austere inconveniences and its moody weather, with remarkable fluency, and her habitation of Plath's body and mind feels complete. At the same time, she offers scenes that show how awkward and bloody minded the poet could sometimes be. It is not a sentimental book, but rather one that evokes Plath's fierce joy in words and images and her huge motherly courage in the face of crippling adversity, with lacerating episodes like the one in which she makes a desperate call from a phone box in the rain while her children peer in at her uncomprehendingly. In the end one wonders not how Plath came to kill herself but how she survived so long. This beautifully written novel may offend literary purists, but most readers will find it moving almost beyond words.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Suffering artists are the sainted martyrs of our times, and novelists love to speculate about iconic figures such as painter Frida Kahlo and poet Sylvia Plath. Already the subject of Emma Tennant's novel Sylvia and Ted (2001), Plath has now inspired first-time novelist Moses, who presents an exquisite interpretation of the final months in the brilliant but angst-riven poet's short life, focusing particularly on the collapse of her marriage to poet Ted Hughes. Moses is so fluent in Plath's swordlike language and mythic imagery, and so attuned to the dire complications of a love match between two intense poets, she writes with a cleansing purity, free of judgment and rich in intuition. In her finest passages, she reanimates the all-too-quickly defiled Eden the two poets attempted to create at Court Green, Plath's feverish and indelible poetic output, and her manic domestic industry, her muscular mothering, gardening, cooking, beekeeping, painting, and sewing. Plath held herself to impossibly high standards, and Moses traces the source of Plath's unsustainable drive and sensitivity and their tragic consequences with empathic artistry. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
In a remarkable reimagining of Sylvia Plath's final months, Kate Moses offers historical fiction at its best. Through the scenes, thoughts, and conversations she creates, Plath's mind is deeply plumbed, revealing more about the troubled poet than we could ever learn through more conventional accounts.

For most readers, the events of Plath's life are legendary. As a young woman, she suffered from mental illness and tried to commit suicide. Ostensibly "cured," she married English poet Ted Hughes and moved to London. Within a few years, however, Hughes left her for another woman. Plath struggled to endure before finally taking her own life at age 30.

Written in a diary format, Wintering describes the events of December 1962, when Plath was settling into a London apartment, trying to nurse herself and her two young children through the flu and seeking help from her estranged husband. Interspersed with these chapters are early scenes of her marriage, when she was both embracing domesticity and regretting that her family's care took precedence over her life's work, poetry. Her conflict is that of many modern women, but Plath's isolation is severe, her pain palpable.

Wintering brings Sylvia Plath to vibrant life, and readers will find themselves hunting down copies of both Plath's and Hughes's poetry, regretting once again that this talented woman's life ended so tragically -- and so prematurely. (Spring 2003 Selection)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Wintering is the Story of a woman forging a new life for herself after her marriage has foundered. She shuts up her beloved Devonshire house and makes a home for her two young children in London, elated at completing the collection of poems she foresees will make her name. It is also the story of a woman struggling to maintain her mental equilibrium, to absorb the pain of her husband's betrayal, and to resist her mother's engulfing love. It is the story of Sylvia Plath. In this deeply felt novel, Kate Moses creates Sylvia Plath's last months, weaving in the background of her life before she met Ted Hughes through to the disintegration of their relationship and the burst of creativity this triggered. It is inspired by Plath's original ordering and selection of the poems in Ariel, which begins with the word "love" and ends with "spring," a mythic narrative of defiant survival quite different from the chronological version edited by Hughes. At Wintering's heart, though, lie the two weeks in December when Plath finds herself still alone and grief-stricken, despite all her determined hope. With exceptional empathy and lyrical grace, Moses captures her poignant, untenable, and courageous struggle to confront not only her future as a woman, an artist, and a mother, but the unbanished demons of her past.

FROM THE CRITICS

Book Magazine - Penelope Mesic

This relentlessly intense novel concerns the last months of Sylvia Plath, whose suicide was the culmination of a feverish period during which she wrote the poems of her posthumously published masterwork, Ariel. Moses' effort is a brilliant, fervent book that deploys a million-dollar vocabulary with Napoleonic assurance. Nevertheless it is a work of fiction that maintains an uneasy relationship with fact. In fairness to the novelist, it is worth noting that Sylvia Plath was a poet who obstructed judgment, an enormously talented writer of spectacularly unfair poems in which she is obsessively precise about exactly how bad she feels, but careless about where she pins the blame. Readers of this novel may find themselves constantly trying to guess if particular words and scenes are culled from someone's memoir or the product of invention. And every time they wonder, they're drawn out of the narrative. This novel is in some ways a tour de force, a plausible re-creation of the way a poet of great gifts might have thought and felt. But there is a fatal reverence and portentousness that binds the work like a straitjacket, making us long for the time when Moses uses her considerable gifts to explore territory that is all her own.

Publishers Weekly

This exceptional first novel, shot through with a fierce poetic luminosity that almost matches that of Moses's much-written-about subject, covers the last few months of the poet's life as she cares for her sick children in the middle of a brutal London winter, struggling to write her last poems and recover from the defection of husband Ted Hughes. Moses is frank, in a long afterword, about her sources-which include Plath's letters and journals-and about what she has made up or merely surmised. But the key question is whether the book succeeds as a compelling piece of fiction, and the answer is that it does, triumphantly. Moses moves deftly back and forth in time, from the couple's last months in their beloved but moldering Devonshire hideaway through Plath's first suspicions of Hughes's infidelities to her arrival in London. Moses catches the quality of English life, particularly its austere inconveniences and its moody weather, with remarkable fluency, and her habitation of Plath's body and mind feels complete. At the same time, she offers scenes that show how awkward and bloody minded the poet could sometimes be. It is not a sentimental book, but rather one that evokes Plath's fierce joy in words and images and her huge motherly courage in the face of crippling adversity, with lacerating episodes like the one in which she makes a desperate call from a phone box in the rain while her children peer in at her uncomprehendingly. In the end one wonders not how Plath came to kill herself but how she survived so long. This beautifully written novel may offend literary purists, but most readers will find it moving almost beyond words. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT - Nola Theiss

This novel is a fictionalized account of the last few months of the famous American poet Sylvia Plath's life. Moses has researched and studied Plath's work and life and has written a wonderfully dense and lyrical story, capturing her state of mind during the month of December 1962, two months before her suicide. Through flashback chapters, the novel concentrates on the two-year time period she and her husband, Ted Hughes, lived in a country home named Court Green where Sylvia could be an earth mother and a poet and Hughes could write. After their dream life dissolved when Hughes had an affair with an exotic woman friend, Sylvia moved to London. She set up housekeeping in W.B. Yeats' childhood home but was beset by illness, depression and isolation. In spite of this, she wrote some of her best poetry there, which was published after her death. Moses does a marvelous job of capturing her state of mind and even her poetic style. KLIATT Codes: SA-Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, Random House, Anchor, 313p., Ages 15 to adult.

Library Journal

Since Plath's suicide in 1963, much of her life has been kept under lock and key by her late husband, poet Ted Hughes, and his family. Consequently, biographical treatments have been plentiful but have lacked a clear vision of their subject, reducing Plath to a mere specter. Now this accomplished and richly textured first novel gives Plath back much of her humanity, using the final and most productive months of her life as template. During this time, Plath was struggling psychologically while trying to raise two children in the midst of her husband's infidelities. The chapters move about in time and are structured around the titles and themes of Plath's posthumous masterpiece, "Ariel." Using her poetic vision, Moses evokes a powerful portrait that is typically missing from other works and excels when describing Plath's day-to-day struggles and triumphs. The only thing lacking is a better understanding of Plath's creative process. Nevertheless, this is an emotionally riveting work. Highly recommended for most fiction collections.-David Hellman, San Francisco State Univ. Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews