SOURCE: Pettingell, Phoebe. “Plath and the Perils of Biography.” New Leader 77, no. 3 (14-28 March 1994): 14-15.

In the following review, Pettingell praises The Silent Woman, contending Malcolm provides an adept treatment of Sylvia Plath's death, her relationship with husband Ted Hughes, and the biographies written about Plath's life.

Janet Malcolm has created a literary niche for herself as a chronicler of quarrels. Ten years ago, In the Freud Archives gave us a blow-by-blow account of orthodox Freudians duking it out with their master's detractors. In 1990, The Journalist and the Murderer depicted the feud between an Army doctor convicted of killing his family and a friendly writer with whom he cooperated in hopes of exoneration, but whose book ultimately concurred with the court. Not one to pull her own punches, Malcolm lets us see how people talk to a reporter, how in seeking to control a story they usually reveal...