Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Patterson (The Idaho Four) teams up with journalist Edwards-Jones (The Witches of St. Petersburg) for an entertaining, lightly fictionalized account of Marilyn Monroe's life and death. Writing from an omniscient, third-person-present perspective, the authors run through the highlights and lowlights of Norma Jeane Mortenson's tumultuous 1930s California childhood, dissect her famous affairs and brushes with organized crime, and speculate about the possible causes--including suicide, murder, or overdose--of her untimely death in 1962. Heavy on dialogue and bursting with anecdotes about the men who tried to define Monroe's legacy, including ex-husbands Arthur Miller and Joe DiMaggio and political figures from JFK to Nikita Khrushchev, the narrative makes up for its familiarity with zippy pacing and novelistic detail. (When DiMaggio briefly disappears from her life after Christmas 1961, Monroe keeps her tree up: "The pine needles have long since dropped, the lights are broken, and the ornaments are hanging limply from the bent branches.") Though the authors don't offer much new or revelatory information about Monroe, there's enough craft on display to keep the pages turning. Readers with a soft spot for Hollywood's perennial muse will find plenty to enjoy. Agent: Robert Barnett, Williams & Connolly. (Dec.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Nearly a hundred years after Marilyn Monroe's birth, Patterson and co-author Edwards-Jones recount her dramatic life. The novel begins with the death of the troubled actress, apparently from an overdose of sleeping pills. Immediately, questions surface: Were all the medications on the nightstand prescribed? If she did take her own life, where was the drinking glass for the water to wash down the pills? Contradicting the title, the authors then shift back in time to show Norma Jeane as a young adolescent who goes "from String Bean to hubba-hubba in one summer." She comes from a broken family--a mother in and out of mental health facilities, a father she never knew, a guardian who's ready to send her back to the orphanage--which leads to her first marriage, at 16, to a local factory worker turned Marine, Jim Dougherty. The chronological narrative follows Norma Jeane as she becomes Marilyn; as she fights to build a career in Hollywood; as she marries and divorces and has affairs with famous men; as she abuses pills and alcohol, attempting to fill the emptiness that plagues her throughout her short life. What's not clear is Patterson and Edwards-Jones' goal here. The early details of Marilyn's biography are told in short chapters, with few more deeply developed scenes. Sometimes there will be a piece of dialogue or an excerpt from a letter that is presented as authentic--and truly, the bibliography suggests an incredible amount of research. So…why is this a novel? How is this framing of Marilyn's story new? There is some work at building a conspiracy theory about the Kennedys (which has been hinted at before by James Ellroy); there is some suggestion that her death may have been murder (which has been explored before by Donald H. Wolfe); and there is a clear romanticization of this tragic, gorgeous life (which has been imagined before by Joyce Carol Oates). It's a very readable American tragedy--but what's new, and what's the point? Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
