Most stories I loved, and some tired me, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I wasn’t looking for gripping plot lines but for beautiful words, and Plath’s ability to write such human prose is without a doubt phenomenal, showing off her genius on every page and leaving a bittersweet taste in my mouth now that I’ve sucked in every last word of this so greedily. This was all I had left of hers to read, the last fictional works. But it’s exactly that which also gives a kind of fun edge to this collection—having analyzed most of her confessional works and knowing her biography, it’s interesting to watch Plath turn it into fiction so masterfully, even implementing the same character names or the same scenes and themes or similarly-structured opening sentences across different stories, notes, and journals. It makes it even better, more personal, and proves how much of her essence resides in these words. Which is a whole lot.

Relative individual ratings:
☆ 1: “Above the Oxbow”;
☆ 1.5: “Charlie Pollard and the Beekeepers”;
☆ 2: “The Smiths”, “America! America!”, “The Fifteen-Dollar Eagle”, “Stone Boy with Dolphin”;
☆ 2.5: “Mothers”, “Context”;
☆ 3: “A Comparison”, “The Shadow”, “Initiation”, “Sunday at the Mintons’”;
☆ 3.5: “Rose and Percy B”, “All the Dead Dears”;
☆ 4: “Ocean 1212-W”, “Day of Success”, “Sweetie Pie and the Gutter Men”, “In the Mountains”;
☆ 4.5: “Snow Blitz”, “The Fifty-Ninth Bear”, “Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams”, “The Day Mr. Prescott Died”;
☆ 5: “The Daughters of Blossom Street”, “The Wishing Box”, “That Widow Mangada”, “Cambridge Notes (From Notebooks)”, “Tongues of Stone”, “Superman and Paula Brown’s New Snowsuit”, “Among the Bumblebees”.