Fabulous Beasts: A Love Story

by W.A. Schwartz

Vivienne Holland, an enormously talented yet mentally fragile woman, comes of age in mid-century America and dreams of becoming a famous writer. However, trapped by the restrictions of pre-feminist society, a scientifically limited medical system unprepared to cope adequately with her mental illness, and her own tragic family background, she faces daunting obstacles. Complicating matters, she falls in love with a charismatic but abusive English poet, and the two of them, moving between the East Coast of America and early 1960's London, set out to blaze a trail that will change the landscape of both American and English literature forever.

But at what cost? While Vivienne is a brilliant artist, she must struggle to overcome impossible odds in pursuit of her dreams while dealing with her tumultuous love affair and her slow and tragic descent into madness.

Inspired by the life of Sylvia Plath, Fabulous Beasts, a story all its own, tackles the complexities of art, abuse, mental illness, and the sacrifices we choose to make.

469 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 29, 2025

About the author

W.A. Schwartz is a psychiatrist and author of poetry, short stories and novels. Her work has been given special mention by the literary journal Glimmer Train (2018) and been long-listed for the Alexander Chee Short Fiction Prize (2020). She was born in Berkeley and raised in California. She spent many years working and living in New Orleans with her husband, a native of Louisiana. She holds a BS in biochemistry and an MD from the University of California. She studied literature at UC Davis and novel writing at Stanford. Currently, she lives in Northern California with her husband and children.

Reviews

[Katheryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

W. A. Schwartz writes well, and her novel is less ghoulish than I might have thought. However, I noticed a few errors that more thorough editing would have quickly corrected. For example, the name of the other woman in the life of Jack Welles (the character based on Ted Hughes) is twice mentioned (p. 349 and p. 359) as Bertina Rudman Clark and four times (twice on p. 332 and then once on p. 336 and p. 400) as Bertina Gutman Clark. Since the name of the historical figure who inspired the character of Bertina was Assia (Gutmann) Wevill, I wonder what Schwartz was doing here. Also, on p. 433, Vivienne Holland (the character based on Sylvia Plath) mentions in 1963 that a wall clock is worth "at least fifty pence." The UK did not decimalise its currency until 1971: in 1963, even American expats in the UK would have spoken of pounds, shillings, and pence. Vivienne probably should have said the wall clock was worth ten shillings, since twenty shillings made a pound. Although these errors (as well as a few more like them) took me temporarily out of the story, I enjoyed reading Fabulous Beasts. The story, though often familiar to me, also fascinated me, because I read the entire 469-page novel in four days. That is a sign that I think the plotting is brisk. I intend to look up more fiction by this author.