not going to give a rating because the entries are very personal and i think it would have been best if her journals were left alone. plath's writing is immaculate and i think these journals kind of taint her reputation because we can clearly see how boy-crazy she is and how much she judges other women.
i literally could not keep up with the number of boy names she's mentioned in the first 300 pages of the book. she's actually insane for going out with that many boys.
she's a master at her craft but journals are meant to be private and i think these ones shouldn't have been published.

mother

Despite it being "only" 674 pages, it took me exactly a year to finish this compilation of Sylvia Plath's journal entries. It quickly became clear to me that these entries were not meant to be read by us and their consumption feels kind of wrong. While I'm an incredibly nosy person and decided to read this out of interest in Sylvia Plath, I can't say for certain whether I believe her diaries should have been made public. Irrespective of how wrong it felt to read her innermost thoughts decades after her passing, I must say that reading these entries not only satiated my curiosity but also helped me tremendously. I can relate to a plethora of her struggles and feel deeply understood by many of her thoughts. At times, it felt scary that someone who passed away decades ago could put my feelings into words better than I've ever been able to. I don't regret having read this but it did change my view on journals published posthumously.