Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates ✔✔✔✔

Blonde is a historical fiction account of the life of Marilyn Monroe, one of the most intriguing stars of the 20th century. Apparently, Oates began this project as a novella of some 15,000 words, but became so fascinated by the subject that the novella became a novel of over 700 pages!

The author insists this is a novel, but those of us who were aware of the details of Monroe's life knew exactly who the Ex-Athlete, the Playwright, the President were. Marilyn always referred to herself as Norma Jean Baker- Monroe was a name given to her by MGM Studios, who at that time virtually owned their stars. Marilyn's greatest tragedy is that she never really knew exactly WHO she was - her mother was a paranoid schizophrenic who spent most of her life in a mental institution, and she never did find out who her father was. She spent most of her childhood in an orphanage, then in a foster home, where the woman of the house, Elsie Pirig, managed to get Norma Jean married off at the age of 16 because she was afraid her husband was lusting after her.

The only life of an artist that I've read or known about that was more tragic was Mozart's, and time and again in this novel her genius at acting was referred to again and again. We always think of Marilyn as the body, the platinum blonde hair, huge mouth and liquid eyes, and there's certainly lots of that - one chapter lists the names of the men and women she slept with in her lifetime, but also we see her talent, becoming the characters she was playing, how she was unfairly over looked for an Oscar nomination for Bus Stop, how when she went to England to do The Prince and the Showgirl she was derided by the British actors but only until they saw the rushes from the movie they were shooting and realized she'd out-acted them all.

Why the drugs, the absolute disregard for her body and how it was exploited by so many? She had no idea who she was, no one to guide her or provide a model, and it was obvious her mother, with her own multitude of problems, had never bonded with Norma Jean so she had no anchor. She so desperately wanted to love and be loved, but was treated over and over again like a toy. Just tragic - that's the only word for it.