The Last Confessions of Sylvia P.

DEBUT In his first novel, Kravetz announces his fictive skill with both his psychotherapy and his nonfiction experience in tow, tracing three interwoven narratives across six decades as the narrative gyres backward and forward in time from Sylvia Plath’s writing of the The Bell Jar This work is many things at once: a literary history puzzle set in poetry’s insular world, an explication of the genius and madness of art creation, a study of the 20th-century evolution of mental health treatment, and a tense portrait of the all-consuming animus of competition. Kravetz seamlessly blends fact and fiction, pulling inspiration from noted history and real-life players like Robert Lowell while also crafting a compelling, suppositional story of an Amadeus-esque rivalry and artistic symbiosis. As is the case with works of historical reinvention, mileage may vary according to one’s tolerance for such liberties, but there’s no denying the execution: the threaded narratives are equitable in their weight and suspense, and Kravetz takes particular care to build a poetic sensibility into his interweavings, even excellently approximating a mid-century Modernist writing style that mirrors that of his chosen subject and period. If the novel’s ceiling is somewhat lowered according to context of this imagined historical conceit, Kravetz’s insight into both the poetic and the unstable mind, and his suggestion of the bleeding line between, lands with plenty of power and intrigue.