My thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My interest in this book was spurred on from having just read "The Barbizon: The Hotel that Set Women Free" by Paulina Bren. In that book, Bren discusses Sylvia Plath’s stay at the Barbizon while she was working at Mademoiselle magazine as a summer intern.

Gail Crowther writes a compelling voyeuristic comparison of two female poets, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. They were contemporaneous in their examination of social mores and feminism—both delved into the expectations of society on women, and how to deal with working, raising a family and maintaining a happy marriage simultaneously. The two poets also pushed the envelope in their discussions of sexuality in their works. And they both suffered from mental illness, and both succumbed to suicide.

Plath and Sexton met at a workshop held at Boston University by Robert Lowell. Their friendship was a complex one based upon both rivalry and admiration. Much of their interaction was written rather than face-to-face dialogue. Other than their interaction at the Ritz after these workshops, there is little to indicate that they spent actual time together.

Crowther has researched this book extensively. Her presentation style allows her to examine each poet independently. The book is broken into chapters about sex, marriage, mothering, writing and mental illness. With help from both Plath’s and Sexton’s daughters, Crowther has crafted a very readable and interesting book.

I enjoyed this book. I was aware of some of the history of Sylvia Plath and Annie Sexton, but this book went into great detail. I adore Boston and like any book with descriptions of events that take place in the city; now I want to go see the room where they used to meet!

I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was well researched and gave the reader an honest look at two very complex women. I loved that the chapters covered a different part of their life like marriage or motherhood. I would say this is a slower-paced read just because there is so much information to take in.

I admittedly didn't know much about Sylvia Plath or Anne Sexton other than who they were (female poets who later committed suicide). I certainly had not contemplated them as contemporaries or especially drinking buddies. I thought the premise that a class they took together left them to hanging out regularly after class, probably sharing similarities in their lives and their struggles was intriguing.

While the parallel descriptions of their younger lives, their courtships and marriages, motherhood, their careers, and their deaths were a great way to set up the book, I was a bit disappointed that the descriptions of their interactions were primarily just possible imaginings of how they may have related to each other. I also thought I read that someone really liked the photo section, but my NetGalley copy didn't have that. I hit Google up to fill in the gaps in my imagination the morning after I finished reading it.

Overall, I liked reading about these two fascinating women, but putting them both in the same book seemed distracting. I did get what feels like a solid overview of both though, and I'd give Three Martini Afternoons at the Ritz 3 out of 5 stars.

While I knew a bit about Sylvia Plath, I did not know much about Anne Sexton. Both were contemporary poets from New England and tragic figures.

I have to admit I struggled reading this book. I felt it rambled on and kept repeating topics and phrases. It felt more like a poorly written PhD thesis than a work meant for the general public.'

Thank you NetGalley and Gallery books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton are icons for those of us who grew up in the "second wave" feminist movement. I always knew who they were, their perceived impact on women's literature and that they committed suicide. I read "The Bell Jar" in 1977. But this is a must-read book for so many reasons beyond what you think you know about Plath and Sexton. It is a beautifully drawn biography that puts in context their lives and their work. It's painful to read because both of them endured a lot of pain. But it reminds us that they were not their illness but whole women who had parents, husbands, in-laws, children, recipes, households, and who worked outside the home (in studies, at tables, attending workshops and conferences, at public readings and radio broadcasts, teaching). This was, of course, in the fifties and sixties when most middle-class women or higher-class women worked as housewives and mothers. Crowther organizes the book starting with an overview of how Plath and Sexton met and generally how their lives were similar, then separates each chapter by topic ("mental health" "writing"), addressing them as individuals. While there are similarities in their lives and they were only four years apart in age, they are very different personalities: Plath was an organized, good student, perfectionist whose gifts were recognized when she was quite young. Sexton a scattered bon vivant who was considered a poor student and who came to writing seriously after she developed serious postpartum depression. Each experienced periods of severe illness and hospitalization. Each received some treatment we would recognize as normal and familiar and other treatments that horrify. The research is impeccable, the writing beautiful. You need not know who the subjects are to love this book because it is a thoughtful, compassionate, and interesting read. It's about fascinating people who did not quite fit into their era and so made waves. Big waves with the advent of "Confessional Poetry" and writing on taboo subjects about what it means to be female. I don't know what I believe about Crowther's observations about what might have been different for Plath and Sexton if they had been born and grown up after feminism took hold again. I can't say whether her occasional suggestions that today's treatment of mental health issues would have been more effective for them. I can say that Crowther's views are drawn from significant knowledge of her subjects and the era and are reasonable food for thought, not-- "out there." I've not read poetry seriously for over forty years, but my next step is to purchase both women's works and spend more time with them. This book is that good.

Crowther's work is a dual biology of Plath and Sexton, and clearly shows how much she knows about Plath's life. The basis for this book caught my attention, but the book itself did not maintain it. For me there was too much speculation, and too much trying to do too much. I wanted to really enjoy this one and didn't. I think it may be because I already knew most of the basic facts.

The book does seem well researched and has a good concept, it just missed for me.

I can see this book appealing to someone looking for a basic understanding of Plath & Sexton.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for the dARC of this work in exchange for my honest review.

Here we have two women poets who came of age in the 1950s. They struggled to be writers while juggling married life and children. This was during a time of that expectations for a woman was solely as a mother or wife. Plath and Sexton rebelled and pushed against the conventions of the day. Unfortunately the two also struggled with mental illness.

This biography of Plath and Sexton compares the lives of the two friends, mostly in a chronological manner. Each chapter took on a subject such as “Early Days”, “Mothering” and “Mental Illness”. It would talk about Sexton then Plath or the other way around. While they were friends, meeting in Boston in a writing course, they didn’t always live near each other as Plath moved to England with Ted Hughes.

One aspect of the book I appreciated was how the Crowther made points on why these two women are important for today. They were trailblazers as women writers and are still relevant. Today women still are not on equal footing with men; although there are a multitude of women authors and poets, men are still regarded more highly than their female counterparts, such as with their books reviewed more often. Crowther points out that when men write autobiographies words often used to describe them include brilliant and sensitive, while the same type of book by women are described as confessional and overemotional. While there is progress it is still not equal.

The format and material worked well for me. I certainly will look upon their poems with new insight and understanding.

An in depth look at two beloved poets, their works and the problems and illnesses they shared. Well written and researched.

Even before reading this book I knew that the Venn diagram that compares Anne Sexton with Sylvia Plath would have a lot of overlapping space. While much has been written about Plath, I am not as well versed in Sexton's life. Crowther's book remedied that and gave me a new appreciation for both women, their plights, and their craft.

Miss Crowther has written an amazingly and meticulously well researched book on the lives of American poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.

For a brief time their lives intersected in Boston where both of them were students at a writing workshop.

The book tells the biography of both women, what made them who they were as women and writers. Both of them were promiscuous, had violent sexual lives, emotionally charged but most importantly both, and what binded them and connected one to the other, was their depression and suicide attempts, and at the end their success in doing so.

There was a lot I didn't know about these amazing women, this book is so rich in details of their life and their minds that at the end you feel you get to know this extraordinary human beings.

This isn't an easy book to read but one that will stay with you for a long time.

British sociologist Gail Crowler traces the intersections of affluent white women Sexton and Plath’s lives, as they grew up near each other a few years apart, yet charted different courses. chapters are entitled: Rebels; Early Days; Sex; Marriage; Mothering; Writing; Mental Illness; Suicide. Plath and Sexton were both ambitious, career-driven poets in an era when society expected women to be neither ambitious nor career-driven. Crowler suggests that this paradox contributed to both women’s mental illnesses and – content warning and spoiler alert – their suicides.

This was a fascinating book for me. I really enjoyed the combination of biography and historical exegesis of being a woman writer in the 1950s/60s that Crowther presented. Her writing style is incredibly easy to fall into - and whether she was describing the women's life stories or the historical times and politics of the world they were writing in, I found the sections equally compelling and equally engaging. Everything about this one was a win for me. I was less familiar with Anne Sexton then I was with Sylvia Plath going in, and the book really sparked my interest in the former and reinvigorated it regarding the latter.

I was interested to read this because I didn't know much about Sylvia Plath other than she was a poet who committed suicide. Having read The Barbizon I found out that she had spent a month as a Mademoiselle guest editor showing me a whole new side to her. I had never heard of Anne Sexton and had read no poems by either of them but I did read The Bell Jar ages ago.

Sylvia and Anne were in a class together for a short time and with another student would go for martinis at the Ritz after class. Other than that they didn't seem to be close. At times they each admired and disliked each other. Both had childhoods that were dysfunctional and marriages that were chaotic and violent. Both had multiple stays in mental asylums and more than one suicide attempts. Sylvia was definitely a type A personality. She got good grades, was an over achiever, wanted to be married and provide a perfect home for her husband and children but she needed to write. Anne on the other hand was not a good mother and seemed dependent on everyone but still managed to hold down a job as a professor. Perhaps because I never read the poetry but I didn't feel like I had a sense of who they were other than the facts provided.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Gallery Books for giving me the opportunity to read this.

Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz was a fascinating book.
I'll admit to knowing very little, like next to nothing about great poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.
These women for their time period were very progressive, very ahead of their time in reference to the subject manner they wrote about. This didn't sit well with many people especially some men who believed women had a role in the household of being a wife and mother and were to be polite and docile women. This was the 1950's and times were very different than now.
These women tragically battled mental illness and it came through in their daily lives and through their writing. This is a nonfiction book and very informative about these women's lives.

Pub Date 20 Apr 2021
I was given a complimentary copy of this book. Thank you.
All opinions expressed are my own.

This is a well researched book about two iconic American poets. The parallels between their lives is fascinating. I enjoyed the structure of the book. Quite interesting.

I loved this glimpse inside the lives and friendship of two of America's most iconic poets--their struggles, their victories, and the way they navigated a male-dominated publishing world that often wasn't ready for what they had to say. I loved seeing inside the workshop where they read one another's poems, and being a fly on the wall at their exclusive post-workshop cocktail hour. Erudite, illuminating, and tender, THREE-MARTINI AFTERNOONS AT THE RITZ will make you want to revisit the poems of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath again and will make you ever more grateful for their contributions to American letters.

A wonderfully readable, caring, and insightful compare-and-contrast portrait of two women who were both brilliant and ahead of their times -- and struggled mightily because of it. Crowther dispels the stereotypes of hysterical females with detailed facts of the situations of their lives, putting both Plath and Sexton in context with each other, their families, friends, and medical caregivers. She does not shy away from the hard stuff (mental illness, domestic abuse, child abuse...) but reports it all with tenderness and humanity. Taking an intersectional feminist view, she refutes earlier dismissals or minimizations of both poets' achievements. The book is structured not linearly but thematically, gradually building to the death of each woman, yet ultimately emphasizing the light their work shone for other people to follow. Although it is a dual biography, the wealth of information and images reveals both subjects in their true individuality.

Three-Martini afternoons at the Ritz is a very well researched and written book. The book delves into the lives of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. Even if you are not familiar with these renowned poets you should give the book a try.

I am a reader who prefers to go in blind to books. I never read the synopsis or reviews previous to picking it up. That being said, I had no idea this was a non-fiction book. Non-fiction is a rarity for me to read because it typically does not hold my interest. However, I did find this book really interesting and intriguing. I have never been a huge poetry fan either (I know, this books is so out of my wheel house, it's not even funny!!), so I had only heard of Plath, and had never heard of Sexton before. By the end of the book, I felt like I knew them both really well, and wished I could have had martini's with them at the Ritz. They were both exceptional women who spoke their minds, regardless of the ramifications. It was heartbreaking to read of the mental struggles they both faced, that ultimately took both of their lives. In the end, I am glad I picked this up and got a glimpse into the lives of these two strong women.