Frieda HughesReviews

Sylvia Plath's daughter - sorry, Frieda! - and clever corvids, what's not to love? I really enjoyed Frieda's writing and, through her, also bonded with George, the baby magpie she saved and adopted. I loved Esther Woolfson's book too, and wish I could rescue a corvid, either crow or magpie - but I don't think I could cope with all the crap!

As well as George, and crows and ducks and owls (and dogs), I also learned a lot about the author, which I found equally interesting. Following Heather Clark's brick of a biography on Sylvia Plath, I picked up on facets of Frieda's family history like a magpie with shiny treasure; she refers to her mother's death as a 'desertion' and her peripatetic childhood with father Ted Hughes was just sad, for the children as well as the neglected pets. He should have given them to Sylvia's brother and his wife, and kept them away from his own bitter sister. Frieda recalls her father telling her that 'a woman should never be more successful than her man', which is telling! She also vents her frustration over being known as 'the daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath' rather than as a poet and painter in her own right, but being a nepo baby cuts both ways - does she not wonder why she was hired as the 'poetry columnist for the Times'? Plath's poetry completely poleaxed me, whereas Frieda's samples are more like prose in short form.

Frieda Hughes came out of a deeply unsettling childhood, beset with longings and yearnings and lacks. She is a poet, a painter, a maniacal gardener and a collector of the pets she never could have in her youth. She also happens to be the daughter of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (she was two when her mother died). Whatever she loves, she loves passionately, and that includes George, the magpie chick she rescued after the nest was wrecked. She digs worms, dishes out dog food, shrinkwraps a dog crate, and cuddles and hovers over this tiny, demanding, noisy little knob of spiky feathers. And cleans up a lot of birdshit. On the floors, on the tables, on her shoulder, down her arms, in her hair... She is mesmerized by this little being, detailing every move he makes, every prance, every mischief, everything he looks at or picks up or steals or smears all over the house (including dog poop, which apparently fascinates him). One has a certain amount of sympathy for her husband at the time, known mostly as "The Ex," who was far less enamored.

I am a birder. I love birds, and I love magpies. But somehow I didn't love either Frieda or George. Too many pages of the same thing, over and over. She is both scattered and obsessive, bouncing from endless hours of planting and garden-building to writing a poetry column for a major newspaper, to painting, to watching George, to changing out of her cement-encrusted boots to a silk suit and four-inch heels for a party in London, spending years fixing up a huge rambling house in Wales (it seems maybe The Ex and a succession of hired contractors do much of that - presumably money is not exactly a big problem). I just got a little weary of her rambling and what felt like self-absorption with little self-awareness. When she let George go, I let them both go. Charlie Gilmour's Featherhood is another magpie memoir by the troubled offspring of an unstable poet, but the weaving of his own "fatherly" experience - both as child and parent to a magpie and a daughter - is funnier, more engaging, and more poignant.

nonfiction/memoir - UK poet/painter (with chronic fatigue/ME) takes in an orphaned baby magpie and thereafter is extremely reluctant to let it leave her house in Mid Wales.

kind of interesting because animal behavior is interesting, but also hard to get past the author's unhealthy ideas about the suitability of a wild thing being her personal pet (even with some allowances made for any person with chronic illness to be a little bit selfish/self-centered). DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME -- bird poop aside, this particular magpie also had the tendency to raid the dogs' litterbox for "treasure" which would then be secreted away into hiding spots all over the kitchen/living area and/or smeared onto couches and pillows.

I would've liked to learn more about magpies (or crows or owls) but the author is less of an information gatherer than an experience seeker, so the content is thin there, and the narrative arc sort of peters out after George leaves.

Read instead: The Soul of an Octopus
Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm

Re: chronic fatigue, see also: Tessa Brunton's Notes from a Sickbed and Elisabeth Tova Bailey's The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

It’s been five years since we had to let go of our aging Shiba Inu girls, puppy mill breeder rescues who lived with us for half their lives. Every day, they brought beauty, laughter, and love into my life.

There is something special about bonding with an animal. My girls didn’t sit in our lap, they didn’t tolerate being held. Shibas are independent by nature, and having spent years in a cage, farm animals not pets, they had to learn to bond with humans—and each other. But they knew I loved them and took care of them and they sat at my feet, allowing me to reach down and pet them. And as they aged and grew blind, they relied on each.

Frieda Hughes loves animals. She had three dogs that slept on her when she took a nap. Then, a storm brought a baby magpie into her life, thrown from its nest and injured and dependent. She named it George.

Until he was grown, George bonded with Hughes and played with her dogs. He was trouble, stealing and hiding all kinds of food and objects, resisting the cage, and pooping everywhere. But he was fascinating to watch and entertaining, and she loved him.

The Ex, as she names him, wasn’t as pleased with her new charge. They had full plates as working artists and new homeowners of a handy-man special house in Wales. Plus, Hughes finally was creating her dream garden. In spite of her challenging health issues, she worked hard at her writing and gardening and home improvement. The Ex was unhappy, adding to Hughes stress. She provided their only income and when the newspaper cancelled her poetry column their art became their income.

Teenaged George was allowed to fly out the window into the greater world, and when he started to stay away overnight Hughes was conflicted, missing him and still happy he would have a normal magpie life.

Hughes memoir about George will capture the heart of anyone who ever loved an animal.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster for a free book.

In this sweet and very sedate memoir, Frieda Hughes. a lonely poet/painter who lives with her soon-to-be-ex husband in an isolated fixer-upper in Wales, rescues and adopts a baby magpie. The bird, named George, delights her with his cuddliness and charming antics. She grows attached to him, and, as he matures, she worries that he will fly away and leave her. As the daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, Frieda has known quite enough heartache for one lifetime.

This memoir-in-diary-entries gets off to a good start and has a strong conclusion, but the narrative sags a bit in the middle. Frieda makes a lot of tea while the magpie eats a lot of dog food, hides a lot of things, and attacks visitors' heads. The scenes of Frieda’s disintegrating marriage, however, are compelling.

Recommended for readers who share Frieda’s interests in birds, dogs, motorbikes, gardening, and Wales.

I received an electronic pre-publication copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I was not compensated in any way.

Miranda and her Aunt Agatha find their house all topsy-turvy when her Aunt Edna comes to visit; Edna's skill with spells is subpar and her ingredients are all old-fashioned so everything comes out wrong. Soon animals are talking, plastic is growing from trees, and Agatha falls into a deep sleep. Can they cut Aunt Edna's visit short before all goes haywire?

I wanted to read this book because of its author; I had not previously read anything by Hughes but am a fan of her mother's works. This was an interesting but not particularly standout title. The story is charming at times with its whimsy, but it also has some odd moments for children's literature (e.g., a relative with a "harem" of wives). Apparently this book started as short stories, and it does feel a little bit like vignettes cobbled together.

The illustrations are terrible in my opinion, although I suppose they are in line with other children's books illustrations from the time period it was published.

In sum, I was glad to have found and read this book myself, but I wouldn't really recommend it to today's kids.