The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain review – virtuoso portrait of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath’s final year

Portraying the breakdown of the couple’s marriage through the eyes of the people around them, this deeply researched and utterly convincing debut is an astonishing achievement Set in the early 1960s, The Daffodil Days tells the story of a couple who move from London to the countryside, have a second child and attempt to settle there, but then, their marriage in tatters, move away again. Instead of describing the couple directly we glimpse them through the eyes of the people around them, from ...

By Melissa Harrison