Jennifer Lawrence gives everything to Die My Love

Jennifer Lawrence Gives Everything to Die My Love

Lynne Ramsay’s film is an extraordinary adaptation of an intense story about a life unraveling.

Review of Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems

Philip Larkin noted that Plath’s final works were original and powerful but added:

“How valuable they are depends on how highly we rank the expression of experience with which we can in no sense identify, and from which we can only turn with shock and sorrow.”

About Die, My Love

Ariana Harwicz’s acclaimed debut novel, published in 2012, captures such shock. The unnamed narrator, who voices the entire story, reveals her rage, contempt, and frustrated desires, depicting her life in the French countryside as a foreigner.

She is a stopped writer, irritated by caring for her newborn.
She despises her husband’s sexual inadequacy.
She maintains an affair with a married neighbor.
“A breath of irrationality had set fire to my existence,” she declares.

After a hospital stay, she appears calmer but violently erupts at her son’s second birthday party:

“I hope you all die, every last one of you… Just die, my love.”

A diagnosis of postpartum psychosis doesn’t quite encapsulate her state. Amid many books and films addressing motherhood’s alienation—including last year’s Nightbitch—Die, My Love stands out in its extremity.

Author’s summary: This intense narrative exposes the raw and unsettling emotions of motherhood’s darker side through a fiercely honest and extreme portrayal.

New Statesman — 2025-11-06