Kate Moses

Wintering

Hodder and Stoughton, 2003.

Up the gravel-crusted footpaths of Primrose Hill she rises, pushing Nicholas in the pram...Across the green lawns spreading on all sides, she walks in the last granular light of afternoon. Frieda's mittened hand curls round the curving chrome chassis of the pram. Sylvia leads her, a docile calf, toward the playground at the foot of the hill. But the summit exerts its own pull, its cloud-marbled arc of changeable, potent sky drawing Sylvia's muted attention

The mother pushing the pram is of course Sylvia Plath, then living at 23 Fitzroy Road, and the date is 13th December 1962. The last months of her life are re-created in this novel, with scrupulous attention to the chronology but questionable taste. A family visit to the Zoo in happier times is described earlier in the novel.