“[Feiler] synthesizes Tsvetaeva’s life and works into a compelling narrative. . . [and] sheds new light on who Tsvetaeva the woman really was, as best as she can be recreated. From this volume the layperson will gain a deep understanding of one of the most frustrating and fascinating women that lived in this century and grasp the works of one of its most important writers.” — Luc Beaudoin , Canadian Slavonic Papers
"Thoroughly enjoyable to read, Feiler’s psychoanalytical approach serves the biographer well, arguing throughout that Tsvetaeva never left behind the conflicts stirred up in childhood." — Olga M. Cooke , The Russian Review
"Feiler’s book is the most complete biography so far written. The poet’s life is recorded and interpreted in a new way, meaningful and coherent. Marina Tsvetaeva’s very dramatic life is told in splendid detail." — Simon Karlinsky, author of Marina Tsvetaeva: The Woman, Her World, and Her Poetry
"The life and poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva, Russia’s greatest modern poet, were marked by passion, commitment and craft. The terrifying egotism that fueled her poetry and mythologized her life from childhood to suicide has never been so convincingly set out as in Lily Feiler’s psychobiography." — Barbara Heldt, author of Terrible Perfection: Women and Russian Literature
"This well-researched, thoughtful, and fair biography of Marina Tsvetaeva especially illuminates that intimate connection between passionate artist and self-destructive woman that, in very different circumstances, also characterized the genius of Sylvia Plath. Against the background of the Russian Revolution, the privations and hardships endured by this uniquely gifted but psychologically damaged Romantic are viewed with a sympathy untouched by sentimentality. I cannot imagine a better introduction to Tsvetaeva’s conflicted life and work." — Anne Stevenson, author of Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath