One of the strengths of this book is the description of how heartbreakingly sad life must have been for Assia. Hughes was unable to really commit to a relationship, so she and her daughter lived only sporadically with him, first in a remote, rented house in Ireland, and then at Court Green (along with Hughes’ parents; his father snubbed Assia and wouldn’t even look at her when she entered a room). Despite the fact that he was the father of their daughter, Hughes did not support Assia financially; the small amounts of money he gave her were meticulously recorded loans that had to be paid back quickly.

Assia’s relationship with Hughes seemed chaotic overall, and, though he loved Shura, Assia must have been deeply and painfully aware that her daughter would never gain the same status in Hughes’ mind as his son and daughter by Plath. A disturbing incident, described by Fay Weldon (Assia’s friend and colleague) describes Hughes giving Shura, still a very small child, wine to drink and then laughing as the child became intoxicated and danced around wildly until she fell asleep — something Weldon observed he would never do with his other children. Lover of Unreason also discusses the idea that Hughes could not really let go of Plath and accept Assia’s unique differences; he drafted a list of somewhat daunting house rules at one point which commanded Assia to be out of bed by eight, bake her own bread, put more variety in her cooking, and introduce a new recipe each week, tasks Plath had once pulled off with verve and accomplishment.  There seemed to be no rules in this "draft constitution" for Hughes to follow.

Finally, there came a time when Assia, ordered out of Court Green by Hughes, suddenly found herself on her own, caring for Shura in a London flat during a dreary and cold English springtime, reminiscent of Plath’s desperate London winter years before. There is no question in my mind that Assia loved her daughter Shura, but she also seemed entangled with her daughter, unable to see her as separate - she made no distinction between what she called her "self" and "her little self."  Assia continued to be tormented by her on-again, off-again relationship with Hughes (he rejected her emotionally and physically at this time, yet occasionally went house-hunting with her for a place they could potentially live in together). She fell into an intractable depression and began to make a will, even to hint not-so-broadly that she felt suicidal. Absolutely no one heard her very obvious cries for help.

Lover of Unreason gives haunting descriptions of the bitter cold and lingering ice on the ground around Assia's house as winter refused to release its grip, a metaphor for the fragmented, seared landscape of Assia’s emotional state. After a bitter argument with Hughes over the phone, her hopes crushed, Assia took advantage of her live-in nanny’s absence, picked up the sleeping Shura (it is not clear whether she drugged the child), and lay down with her on a pallet she had prepared in the kitchen, made from an eiderdown quilt and pillows. In a horrifying echo of Sylvia Plath’s suicide, Assia sealed the room, took a handful of sleeping pills with gulps of whiskey, then turned the oven's gas taps wide open. Shura was only five years old when she and her mother died together.