Blonde: the classic novel about Marilyn Monroe, now a major Netflix film

Sorry, but I could not continue with this book which is so well written and written without prurience. I could not continue to read of how Marilyn was so degraded by the Hollywood system and I know that there was to be no happy ending.This is not the fault of Joyce Carol Oates; she wrote as she found.

I’m a fan of Joyce Carol Oates, a writer whose ability to write dark literature and fantastical horror makes her perfect for this reimagining of Marilyn Monroe’s life. The book is long but never boring. Monroe is conceived as a true artist, absorbed by the meaning of life. Her striving for higher connection becomes a spur to her acting. In this, she is far more perspicacious than her male co-stars, who are mostly intent on technique and their next sexual conquest. Monroe’s drive for a bigger vision, for love and for motherhood, leaves her confused by the media’s relentless focus on the trivia of her life. She increasingly seeks solace in drugs as the weight of her exploitation by men and The Studio – and the neglect of her mother and absent father – bear down on her. Her fame eventually puts her into contact with the top echelons of American society, where she is violently and tragically abused. The ending leaves you in tears – although it’s worth knowing that this is almost certainly not how she died. Chilling, brilliant, recommended.

Marilyn Monroe long ago became public property - and only made serious money after her tragic death in August 1962. She hankered after a serious acting career but apart from a memorable if commercially lukewarm turn in The Misfits she settled for the movies that made her name - screwball comedies which focused on her high-octane sexiness rather than her Method acting skills. This is a fictionalised biography - broadly in the same mould as Wolf Hall, say - where the central facts are more or less undisputed but the ins and outs of what happened when - and who said what - are, of necessity, a matter of conjecture. Oates’s Marilyn is a damaged soul. She spent time in an orphanage and a foster home, without a dad, and her mentally ill mum was institutionalised (dying in the 1980s, more then 20 years after her daughter’s death). From this trauma, Marilyn rose to become the most desired woman in the world. But there were failed marriages and personal heartache - and an unfulfilled wish to be a mother. It’s a desperately sad story. Oates portrays Marilyn as very much a victim though she was also fearlessly and ruthlessly ambitious, achieving great success - even if she didn’t earn as much as some of her contemporaries. Sadly, it was only after she died that her estate started to make serious money through licensing her image. The novel is exhaustive - and at times exhausting. It’s too long and could’ve been more judiciously edited. But somehow it does work: it’s dark, immersive, forensic, and deeply poignant. Of course, the question of how much is true - and how much isn’t - is difficult or impossible to resolve. But the overall trajectory - the little girl who becomes a drug-addled superstar but can’t lay rest to the demons of her past - seems on the money. Some might well see it as exploitative or disrespectful to mine the material of a dead celebrity’s life. But it is a life worthy of close study and examination, given Marilyn’s seismic impact on showbiz and wider culture.

Very sad, very dark, very engrossing.

A huge book as JCO gives us a fictional re-imagining of Norma Jeane (sic) from her early childhood with a dangerous, mentally-unstable mother, via an orphanage, a foster home and, eventually, Hollywood - via numerous detours.JCO is especially interested in Norma Jeane's inner life and her relationships with men, all driven by her search for her absent father. I know little about Monroe so have no idea what is fact and what fiction but certainly this feels like a convincing portrait of a woman created and constructed as 'Marilyn Monroe'. Certainly the persona made millions for the studios (while Norma Jeane was paid a pittance) but it also served Norma Jeane herself, allowing her, to some extent, to keep her true self hidden - although, eventually, of course, it becomes erased...An intelligent analysis of a modern cultural icon, and a book which gives back attention to the woman behind the Monroe mask.

This book - fiction, not fact - seemed truer to me, or closer to capturing the spirit of Marilyn Monroe than the couple of biographies I've read.Characters from Monroe's "real" life are included or left out or amalgamated or recreated in various ways in order to intensify observations about her fragility and vulnerabilities and her need to please the men in her life and live up to her created image.What I found really remarkable and moving was the "voice" of Monroe that came through so strongly, and her confusion and the ever-increasing speed of her descent into the maelstrom of star-status or icon-status, and her helplessness as the current of need etc. tugged her down, however hard she tried to resist.There was one minor stylistic idiosyncrasy that irritated me, and that was the way that, towards the end of the book the word "and" is sometimes expressed as "and" and sometimes as "&". I couldn't understand that, and there seemed to be no logic or sense in the variation which did not belong to one character or narrator, but just jumped around in a distracting way.But that apart, this is a five star book for me, an imaginative triumph,very movingly so, and reminding us (in a similar way to Don Delillo's "Libra") that fiction can be truer than fact.