I'll qualify my review by first saying that I love Sylvia Plath's work. I really do. Her poetry is magnificent in it's incisiveness.

Her short stories, however, are a bit hit-and-miss. A few, like the title story, All the Dead Dears, The 59th Bear and others are really quite good, and carry some of that incisiveness and amazing language of her poetry. Others just feel a bit like an exercise.

The journal entries are interesting as far as putting some of the ensuing stories in perspective, but I always find reading someone else's journal a bit... like trying to taste something with someone else's tongue. An interesting attempt to see life from another POV but not always as tasty as you imagine.

Anyway, not a bad read at all, just a bit slow-going. Her poetry is mind-blowing. I'll stick to that.

Sylvia Plath writes beautifully. This collection of short stories is one of the highlights of this reading year.

A foreword,

I do not consider myself a critique. I’m a collector of feelings and sensations, and of that I can talk about with confidence.

My journey regarding Sylvia Plath has been a bumpy one. I remember trying to read “The Bell Jar” six or even more years ago and failing the task […] I told her in my mind: “Today I’m not ready for you, perhaps I still need to grow in certain areas of my life, I don’t know when that’ll be, but I’m on my way and I’ll go back to you eventually”.

I came back to her in the form of the exhaustively written biography by Heather Clark, “Red Comet”, which I read for a whole year in 2021, and the huge task of reading her hasn’t stopped ever since. “The Colossus and Other Poems”, with its surrealist and scrupulous touches; the vulnerable, open, bold and honest poems of “Ariel”. Both deserving a second read, but I’m far from being a quick reader; reading takes and gives me life at the same time, and there are so many books to explore still.

I still haven’t got back to “The Bell Jar”.

✦✧✦

“I talk to myself and look at the dark trees, blessedly neutral. So much easier than facing people, than having to look happy, invulnerable, clever. With masks down, I walk, talking to the moon, to the neutral impersonal force that does not hear, but merely accepts my being. And does not smite me down”. –From The Cambridge Notebooks, 1956

I embarked on the “Johnny Panic” trip during the whole of April, reading one piece a day. Plath stimulates to great extent with her prose and loaded descriptions of what one could call ‘mundane’ scenarios. Yet, so filled with life, wit, darkness and gloomy hues, together with the depth of her feeling and intellect, gave each creation the the sensation of being engulfed in dream–or nightmare, and you either go deep with her into it or not at all.

My favorites from the compilation:

✦Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: the most fantastical, bizarre of the collection. It’s got a gothic essence and brushes of delirium.

✦Stone Boy with Dolphin: written with the cadence of a poem, a story with soft erotic tones.

✦The Wishing Box: gives a glimpse of how her creative mind worked. Why life experiences were key foundation to her work.

✦Cambridge Notes: insights into her psyche, her writing, worries, fears, and the importance of identity as a writer and as a person.

I really liked these short stories - I was surprised to discover them, because I hadn't heard of them before! I love Plath's writing because it's so personal, you can really tell that she puts a lot of herself into her work. At the same time, I find a lot of it very relatable, and her work is always very inspiring to me.

Enjoyed 'The 59th Bear' and 'In The Mountains' the most.

Updated November 2014: have also read and liked 'A Day In June' and 'Above the Oxbow'.

Other stories worth mentioning include 'Mothers' and 'Day of Success' - have yet to read the entire collection and intentionally avoided the darker stories.