SOURCE: "The Flash of the Knife," in The Nation, New York, Vol. 258, No. 19, May 16, 1994, pp. 670-73.

[In the following review of The Silent Woman, Fels praises the intensity of Malcolm's writing and maintains that it is Ted Hughes, Plath's husband, who is the silent one.]

Janet Malcolm's new book, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, is a brilliant literary tour de force that reads like a thriller. On one level Malcolm's subject is biography, the psychological complexity and potential destructiveness of this genre. She explores the legacy of the poet Sylvia Plath and its impact on those who knew her—or tried to write about her. But on another level it is about the crimes that people commit against one another. Malcolm's awareness of these crimes gives the book a kind of lurid intensity. Murder, burglary, brutal attacks, women brought to their knees—the metaphors she...