4 5 – forty five – a book by frieda hughes

March 8, 2009 at 2:31 am · Filed under Books - reading and tagged: forty five, frieda huges

“My problem is that I am the daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, but I wanted to be an individual. But we are, of course, a product of our parents. In denying them, you deny part of who you are. It’s taken me years to be ­comfortable with that”

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Thus said Frieda Hughes, daugher of infamous parents, here. Her book ’45′ published in 2006 explores her years of burden unable to talk of her life. as in the foreword by Libby Purves, ‘when ur life–and ur parental heritage– is the subject of lifelong speculation and intrusion, it is harder to tell ur story than it wud be for most of us. when u are teh daugher of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. ur past and ur parents get stolen frm u on a regular basis and reworked according to a dozen different dialectics: gossipy, ideological, literary, romanticized, quarrelsome. ..”

This book talks abt abt her life, from birth to the 45th year. From a time her mom put her head into an oven to the time her dad died of cancer. From a little gurl who looks for love everywhere since then when abandoned by her mother, to a gurl fallen in love in 37. i am not fascianted abt the writing, but fascinated abt the ‘idea’ of compiling her life’s events in such way, with art pieces of course. they are her identity.

i wudn’t recommend u to buy this book, if u hve leisure u cud borrow in the library and have a look. i bet, it wud only take 30+ minutes. don’t read coz of curiosity over ‘their ‘daugher though! what i wud like to do after reading is jolting down my life from year 1 to mid 20th year, and see what went wrong over the years

meanwhile, here are few more with  Frieda’s notes on them:

“This is the last packet of cigarettes I smoked. I have a problem with anything ruling an individual, such as an addiction. I went round the world on a Dutch freighter once, but my whole life was spent thinking, ‘Where am I going to get my next cigarette from?’ I thought I’d wait until the stress was over before giving up smoking, but stress is never over. Life is stress. When I gave up, my rage and despair were unbelievable. I cried for weeks”

“This painting of my husband Laszlo captures his combination of being masterful yet soft”

“The moment I met Laszlo on a garden path, we fell in love. He gave me a hug and he smelled right; he smelled clean. We moved in after our first date without knowing each ­others’ surnames. This painting is about that explosion, like being in a bubble of light”

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To view the artworks of 45: http://www.friedahughes.com

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