User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
This is a rejected short story Sylvia Plath wrote when she was 20. Unearthed and published for the first time, it’s an exciting event for no one but us literary nerds.
The story itself is above-average quality. A bit wordy at the beginning, but amps up significantly by the halfway point. When the less-than-subtle suicide allegory kicks in, it becomes unputdownable for those of us obsessed with Plath’s personal life.
While clearly the work of someone still developing their craft, the themes provide an interesting insight into one of the greatest writers of all time. I was not disappointed!
Rating: really liked it
My first encounter with Sylvia Plath in this short story. She wrote it at a young age and it was a rejected short story. A weird, dark and intriguing story of a young lady, Mary, being put on the train by her parents to 'the Ningth Kingdom'. But what is that 9th Kingdom and what is the symbolism/meaning of this story....She meets a 'kind-seeming lady' on the train who explains things... but things do not get any clearer it seems. As the journey progresses, at first quite pleasant, Mary starts to think she does not want to go to the Ninth Kingdom. The lady friend on the train gives her some advice what to do....
Lips the colour of blood, the sun an unprecedented orange, train wheels that sound like 'guilt, and guilt, and guilt': these are just some of the things Mary Ventura begins to notice on her journey to the ninth kingdom...More to follow later. Intriguing and great writing style.
Rating: really liked it
I read the author's article and know that this book is not something that I can immediately figure out once finished. Especially when she said:
"I can’t let Shakespeare get too far ahead of me, you know"
— because let's be real. When else do you ever get to crack Shakespeare works without some help. So, if you're reading this simply to read, then I'm afraid you'll get nothing out of it; or depending on how you want to make of it.
But for all that, I hate to be kept in the dark so I did some digging on the figurative meaning behind this piece. And it's best to say, my second time rereading this was something else. The experience of reading Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom is inextricably linked to what we know is about to happen: an impending doom made all the more terrifying by the other passengers' blissful innocence. Hence, to escape the fate that awaits everyone else, Mary realizes, she will have to opt-out of the system.
To think that I love how the book starts its story because it reminds me of Harry's first ride with Hogwarts Express might be an understatement to delightful. Because if anything, Mary's trip to the Ninth Kingdom is anything but joy, and Mary's decision to get off the train is more likely a suicide allegory.
The story appears to suggest that life is miserable and leads to nothing but disaster and that the only way out is to stop living, reflecting the author's first suicide attempt the summer after writing this story. Having myself filled with this information gave me cold shivers, considering how clueless I was the first time I read this and how accurate it seems to the living day now.
All said and done, I know Plath's works may not be up to everyone's alley, but if you want something short and mindblowing. This book is perfect for you.
Rating: really liked it
Mary Ventura bids a reluctant farewell to her parents before embarking on a train journey to the mysterious Ninth Kingdom. But what is the Ninth Kingdom - and will Mary reach it safely?
Sylvia Plath’s short story sounds dreamlike and that’s exactly how it reads! The premise and overall atmosphere feels like Plath by way of Shirley Jackson/The Twilight Zone though unfortunately it’s nowhere near as good as either. Considering she wrote this as a 20 year old undergraduate at Smith, the prose is surprisingly strong and you can see her literary talents emerging. Still, I wouldn’t call it a gripping or even half-interesting reading experience.
The deliberate vagueness and allegorical style intentionally lends itself to various interpretations. Is it simply a nightmare? A symbolic representation of Plath’s state of mind? A metaphor for the afterlife? Is the maternal woman on the train an angel or God? Is the train conductor Death? Is Mary dead – who killed her; her parents? Is the story a metaphor for Mary’s struggle to regain control of her life and destiny? An allegorical coming-of-age story? A metaphorical battle against the seeming inevitability of depression?
It’s impossible not to read the increasingly tense atmosphere and ominous tone of the story contextually, given Plath’s most famous for killing herself. Her first suicide attempt would shortly follow the completion of this story; she would fail for the last time ten years later.
I like aspects of the story – the strange train people, the doom-laden journey, the odd place names (Seventh Kingdom, Ninth Kingdom) – but, like a fleeting dream, Mary Ventura: Fret Detective was a little too insubstantial to leave much of an impression. Which is probably why Plath succeeded as a poet – that subtlety lends itself perfectly to the medium. And it’s fairly well-written, particularly considering her age at the time.
But it’s still a largely dull and unsatisfying read – like The Bell Jar, her prose leaves me cold and indifferent despite the potentially compelling subject matter. I find with Plath it’s more interesting thinking about her writing afterwards than it is reading it.
Rating: really liked it
Late in 1952, Smith College student Sylvia Plath completed this “vague symbolic tale” and submitted it to
Mademoiselle. Although
Mademoiselle commissioned Plath to interview poet Elizabeth Bowen, and invited her to come to New York as a guest editor (a heady and unsettling experience which provided inspiration for
The Bell Jar), the magazine rejected her story. Although Plath later made a half-hearted attempt at revision, she never submitted “Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom” again.
It remained unpublished for more than fifty years. Until now. It’s no masterpiece, but it is quite good, well worthy of the magazine publication it never received and a significant contribution to the Plath legacy.
It is a tale of a young woman’s train journey—urged on her by her parents to a destination continually referred to as the Ninth Kingdom. Is it a good place or a bad place? Or perhaps “The Good Place” or “The Bad Place”? Is the knitting fat woman who sits next to Mary her friend, or is she an enemy? She Mary continue to her final stop, or she she pull the emergency cord?
What makes this is good short story—at least for me—is that each detail of the journey is precisely imagined, and yet characterized by such doubleness, such unrelenting ambiguity, that the reader remains in doubt of the wisdom of Mary’s choice under her journey reaches its end.
Rating: really liked it
A fairy tale full of atmosphere turns dark quickly - 3 starsThe shuttle of the train wheel struck doom into her brain. Guilt, the train wheels clucked like round black birds, and guilt, and guilt, and guilt.Again I must compare the writing of Sylvia Plath with Stephen King. This short story of a train ride reminded me of the end of The Waste Lands, where the main characters end up in sentient psychopathic train.
Following the tracks laid out by your parents or come into one’s own, even if that means sounding all the alarms, is the question at the heart of Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom.
The protagonist of this story is led on the express train of life alone, and despite the train being quite full, there is almost no help for Mary during her trip. She comes to realise more and more during the ride, in a well done feeling of increasing unease, that not taking action will only lead her to the ominous Ninth Kingdom. Which I take to be a metaphor for depression, death or suicide, but which is not made specific by the author. The writing is very spheric, at the end I almost felt in the snow, running. Enjoyable, and with a lot of the alienation from normal life that we can see coming back in the The Bell Jar, this was a surprisingly satisfying short story from a 20 year old.
Rating: really liked it
What a nice cover!
What a beautiful writing!
How dare they reject that brilliant short story from publishing?
Sylvia has been able to master writing these events in a very limited number of pages, no more than forty.
Rating: really liked it
Surreal and arresting - can't help but see the the analogy that 'tracks' over into the life of this great poet towards the end. We can all relate to that feeling of 'movement' that a train makes; the different stations, always having to be ready to exit at some point. A reflection of Sylvia Plath that is haunting.
Rating: really liked it
Everyone has to go away sooner or later.When I think of Plath, I don’t tend to think of The Twilight Zone, but that’s what came to mind here, and Alice in Wonderland, somehow. This surreal and ominous allegorical train ride builds quickly and is filled with creepy encounters and panicky imagery. It’s very short, and very dark, and manages to squeeze in an early dig at her father hiding under a hat, sentiments that would later show up in the more mature and angry poem “Daddy.” But then again, there is that theory that that poem is really about her mother, shown here with blood red lips, cold and domineering.
She was 20 when she wrote this. Knowing her fate, you can’t help but wonder about the prophecy of it. And you can’t help but think of Anna Karenina.
The shuttle of the train wheel struck doom into her brain. Guilt, the train wheels clucked like round black birds, and guilt, and guilt, and guilt.
Rating: really liked it
Sylvia Plath doing what Sylvia Plath does best- zinging imagery, with a dark and sinister air hovering in the background. This story was intense, ominous and knew exactly what it wanted to achieve. Not a word wasted
Rating: really liked it
Striking, beguiling, and awfully sinister.
Rating: really liked it
I think I'm open-minded about 1.) books on my library's new arrival shelf and/or 2.) checking out the works of notable or respected authors. With that in mind I checked out Plath's newly issued novella.
While it was not bad writing per se, the story - the title character is a young lady on a train ride with sinister overtones ( . . . I think?) - was too vague or overly dependent on a reader's interpretation. I was thinking it was heading towards a
Twilight Zone twist / finale, but there was just nothing.
Rating: really liked it
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3.5 stars
I enjoyed this short story. It does strike me as a creative writing assignment as it seems to follow a certain formula (I remember in a creative class on short stories lecturers would always stress the 'wow ending'). There was an immediacy to this story which was intensified by the directness of the prose (narrative uses very simple statements and observations) and I thought it clever that such an ordinary thing as a train ride could come to convey such a sense of unease. This uneasiness quickly increases and the story ends in an almost predictable ambiguity. I like that most of the story is shrouded in mystery, and one could read into this story all sorts of things.
It definitely gave me Shirley Jackson vibes (I know that Plath admired Jackson's works).
Rating: really liked it
“The shuttle of the train wheels struck doom into her brain. Guilt, the train wheels clucked like round black birds, and guilt, and guilt, and guilt.”“Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom” is for the readers of Plath, who love Plath, for all that Plath represents. This short work, written during the time Sylvia was a student at Smith College, is speckled with brilliance and lines that will make up the alluring essences of Ariel or even The Bell Jar. For readers who enjoy curling in the secrets of her diary, “Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom” is almost a jolt— a prophetic warning of future suicide attempts and a life of pressures and second-guessing. The short story weighs on the reader like a damp quilt.
It seems as if
HarperCollins Publishers excavated a true, infant gem in the massive plethora of what is available to Plath fans, a sort of fossilized egg that shares the DNA of its predecessors. Plath’s writing is so captivating and accessible that it is hard to imagine how private Plath was with her subconscious. “Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom” is a young Sylvia with the same outlook on life. To new Plath readers, keep in mind this short story is 11 years before the publication of
The Bell Jar, years before her marriage with Ted Hughes, and barely months away from her first suicide attempt. Moreover, “Mary Ventura” was completed before her rejection from Harvard’s summer writing program. All in all, “Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom” mirrors Sylvia Plath before the scratches that would eventually become deeper wounds.
On the surface, “Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom" is a story about a young woman on a train to a destination unknown; however, like much of Plath’s work, the short story has translucent layers the reader must pull back. The short story allows us to see the dichotomy of female agency and independence; free will and paralysis; youth and death. Narrative-wise, the story is a quick, simple reader under 30 minutes. However, the wave of what is underneath hitting the reader right in the chest. You remain hopeful and somewhat proud of Mary’s agency and willingness at the end of the story. It seems as if the story echoes the plights and happy ending conventional to fairy tales...
Yet, reality sinks in. You leave the short work sad knowing Sylvia’s fate, wondering what led her astray and into the Ninth Kingdom and why Plath would never get the chance to meet the woman with the blue gaze of triumphant and love. Why Plath could not hear “I have been waiting for you, dear” in the hullabaloo of her life.
The train has departed.
Rating: really liked it
Allegorical short story about agency and self-determination. Deceptively simplistic.
