FICTION

THE IT-DOESN’T-MATTER SUIT by Sylvia Plath, illustrated by Rotraut Susanne Berner (St. Martin’s Press: $10.95; 41 pp.). This is the story of 7-year-old Max Nix, youngest of seven brothers, who gets his one wish for the perfect suit. Unearthed from the Plath collection at Indiana University, it is a straightforward children’s playful illustrations dissuade even the staunchest Plath scholar from earnest deconstruction. “Daddy” does not make an appearance and when the miraculous “woolly, whiskery, mustard-yellow” suit arrives out of nowhere at the Nix home, and is tried on by every male Nix ahead of Max, it becomes clear that it is his suit and his alone.