This new, uncluttered study of Sylvia Plath's poetry offers a calculated balance between feminist theory and the old heritage of the New Criticism. The apparent thematic peg here is Plath's fascination with mirrors in her life and in her work. . . . This is a very solid work; it is the most readable of the recent books on Plath, and, among the recent works this reviewer knows of, none is comparable. "Choice"

Much of Sylvia Plath's poetry springs from her attempts to recognize and reconcile her own paradoxes: the ones she found inside herself and the ones she faced in the world in which...