The Daffodil Days: A Novel

By Helen Bain A New York Times Editors' Choice A stunningly inventive and poignant historical novel that follows Sylvia Plath through the final year of her life, told through the eyes of the people who knew her during her time in the English countryside—a “virtuoso, deeply researched and utterly convincing debut” ( The Guardian ). In the early 1960s in a small English town, the church bells ring. The people go about their days, catching glimpses of one another. There's the local doctor, who knows more about his patients than he would sometimes prefer. There's the young assistant at the dress shop, who understands that the ladies who come there for a new outfit are often hoping to find a new self. There are the men who ring the tower bells at the church three times a week, the notes, harmonious and clashing, rippling out across the rooftops of the town. Among all these lives, one young couple moves into focus. New to the town with their small daughter, they have escaped London for a quieter existence at Court Green, the thatched house beside the church. The life they intend to build—out of secondhand furniture stenciled with hearts and flowers, expertly cooked suppers for weekend guests, and devotion to the work that matters to them both—will be a good and happy one. The Daffodil Days depicts a pivotal year in the marriage of 20th-century literature's most infamous couple, primarily the wife: Sylvia Plath. It is a “kaleidoscopic yet nuanced” ( New York Times Book Review ) portrait of this enigmatic writer, refracted through the rich inner lives of a rural community caught, if only for a moment, in her light. Here, Sylvia is capable and charismatic, vulnerable but strong, full of spirit. For fans of literary and historical fiction, with prose “supple and intelligent and exact” ( The Guardian ), The Daffodil Days offers a poignant glimpse of a life reimagined. The lasting impression is not of what breaks us but what binds us: resilience, creativity, and love.

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