SOURCE: "Plath and the Perils of Biography," in The New Leader, Vol. LXXVII, No. 3, March 14-28, 1994, pp. 14-15.

[In the following review of The Silent Woman, Pettingell praises Malcolm's journalistic and self-conscious approach to biography.]

Janet Malcolm has created a literary niche for herself as a chronicler of quarrels. Ten years ago, In the Freud Archives gave us a blow-by-blow account of orthodox Freudians duking it out with their master's detractors. In 1990, The Journalist and the Murderer depicted the feud between an Army doctor convicted of killing his family and a friendly writer with whom he cooperated in hopes of exoneration, but whose book ultimately concurred with the court. Not one to pull her own punches, Malcolm lets us see how people talk to a reporter, how in seeking to control a story they usually reveal the very information they later regret having mentioned. Her tales are gripping...