Years ago I was fortunate to be part of a writing salon founded by two outstanding writers, teachers and feminists: Diane Middlebrook and Marilyn Yalom, both, sadly, now deceased.

Middlebrook was best known for her biographies of poets Anne Sexton和Sylvia Plath andmusicianBilly Tipton. Yalom too wrote about Plath in her 1985 book “Maternity, Mortality, and the Literature of Madness.” After Yalom died, Kate Mosesbeganco-curatingthe salon with Middlebrook. Moses’ first novel was “Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath.”

If you search online for “biographies of Sylvia Plath,” there are so many that Book Riot, a highly recommendedsite with excellent, diverse writing about books and reading, has a top five list. It consists of “Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted” by Andrew Wilson; Middlebrook’s “Her Husband: Ted Hughes和Sylvia Plath – A Marriage”; “Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953” by Elizabeth Winder; “The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes”by Janet Malcolm; and Heather Clark’s “Red Comet: The Short and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath.”

So what is it that makes Plath such a compelling subject for so many writers? For starters, she’s the perfect tragic heroine. A brilliant, glamorous poet, plagued by depression, Plath was married to Ted Hughes, an equally brilliant but philandering man. She ended her life with her head in the oven as her children slept nearby.

I became aware of Plath as an impressionable young woman. After I read “The Bell Jar,” she became the subject of intense fascination for me, asshe hasfor so many other young women.

But there was so much more to her than that. Plath was instrumental in creating the genre of confessional poetry. Many of her works show the plight of mid-20th century women, and she became an icon for feminists worldwide, spurring the intense conversation about women’s place in a patriarchal society that became a cornerstone of second-wave feminism. Her frankness and unapologetic expression of female angermade her an idol of young women around the world.

Plath was institutionalized for her depression and had repeated, traumatic electroshock therapy which, in those days, was administered at high levels without anesthetic. Following her death, she became a symbol of the horrors of abusive psychiatric treatment, especially for women who didn’t fit the traditional mold.

Plath still has great relevance for women today. OnLiveWire, a website in India that publishesopinion pieces on politics, feminism, LGBTQ rights and pop culture,a Delhi University student namedShatakshiwrites:“普拉斯,像我一样,不懂why she had been steeped in the make-believe of fairy tales when real life was nothing like it. …Her unflinching perspectives guided me in breaking my silence on issues of trauma and depression. … If it hadn’t been for her, it would have become increasingly difficult for me to cope with my mental health.”

Now comes a new novel on Plath, “TheLastConfessions of Sylvia P.,” written by Bay Area journalist and therapist Lee Kravetz.

At the center of the novel is the fictional discovery of a handwritten manuscript of “The Bell Jar.” Kravetz employsthree perspectives to bring Plath to life — those of her psychiatrist, a rival poet and, years later, a curator of antiquities. His characters also include Ted Hughes as well as poet Robert Lowell, a teacher of Plath’s at Boston University who himself suffered from bipolar disorder and was institutionalized.

A novel about Plath written by a man? How dare he in this age of self-appointed, censorious arbiters who tell us who can write what. This Kravetz is a brave man.

And you know what? It’s a great novel. The story is compelling and the characters are well-drawn. It’s a welcome addition to the Plath canon.