One could also describe this book as chilling, in that you are truly transported into the heart and mind of a woman who ultimately finds such despair she chooses to take her own life. That being said, its best to be savored for times when you want to be mellow. Personally, during an account of a particularly harrowing night when both of her children are ill, I felt like I was present in the room with her, understanding what brought her to her depths of despair. I can't say I have ever been so transported by the written word.

Of the encompassing story that is Plath & Hughes, Moses takes us back and forth during periods of Sylvia's life, but focuses on her last months living as a single mom. These images, of begging for telephone service in the freezing cold with two restless children at her side, of waking in the wee hours to work only to be disrupted by her children's cries as they start her day, weave a tale of common frustrations magnified by the true despair and hopelessness Sylvia felt by Hughes' betrayal. In glimpses back to her earlier life, we come to realize that Hughes was truly the one person she depended on emotionally and who she thought, although Hughes tending to be a critical man, loved her unconditionally. Perhaps he was the one person she allowed herself to be her true self around. His betrayal was a devastating blow.

And although it does seem at many times it is Sylvia against the world, and she appears to have a penchant for attracting people's unkindness, she does forsake offers of help from her mother, in a pre-Christmas phone conversation that leaves you wondering - had she tried to find new meaning in her relationship with her mother, would her fate have been different?

You begin to suspect Sylvia's doom as Moses describes so heart-wrenchingly a Christmas shopping outing Sylvia takes on the streets of London. With a nanny to watch her children for a few precious hours, fulfilled after having resumed her writing and proud for having survived the first months of marital separation, Sylvia finds herself hopeful and in the Christmas spirit, with cautious anticipation for the future. However, a chance encounter with her husband's lover reduces her to following and staring at the woman through a shop's window, defeated.

On February 11, 1963 Sylvia Plath put her children to bed, left out milk and bread for them, and took her own life. She was 30 years old, and full of promise. Her suicide left her children mother-less and a world left to wonder what went so horribly wrong.

A novel of great depth into a literary figure many strive to understand, Wintering stands to be a classic for all who find Sylvia so fascinating. It's hard to believe Kate Moses was not at her side, breathing in her very thoughts, all for our gain.