Lover of Unreason elucidates the many painful missteps taken both before and after the tragic death of this mother and daughter. Assia wanted to be buried, like Plath, in a rural English churchyard, her tombstone carved with the epitaph, “Here lies a lover of unreason, and an exile.” Instead, Assia and Shura remained unburied for years, their ashes stored at Court Green (and even misplaced for a short time) until Hughes eventually scattered them to the four winds. The authors do an excellent job of describing Hughes’ devastation after their deaths, his terrible sense that he was toxic to anyone he loved, and his soul-searing guilt over not preventing both Assia and Sylvia’s suicides. One wonders, for all his flaws, how he summoned the strength to pick up his life afterwards. The Assia Wevill-Ted Hughes equation seems an incomprehensible snarl of passions, depressions, betrayals, and warring demons which left, at the end, three senseless deaths.

Lover of Unreason helped me understand and know Assia Wevill a bit better.  Despite her destructive role in Plath's life, I certainly felt a measure of sympathy for Assia and her daughter, though I became somewhat sorry that I read this work in the gray middle of winter. It is an unsparing look at overwhelmingly tragic circumstances, so much so that I think Lover of Unreason is best read in the middle of spring and summer, so that one can step out for a bit of light and fresh air after steeping in the shadowy griefs of this book.