Blonde is a novel written by Joyce Carol Oats and published in 2000 that fictionalizes the life of Marilyn Monroe. I read this in anticipation of the Netflix movie adapted from this book that is set to be released in September of 2022. This is a fictional biography of Marilyn Monroe's life, taking real elements from Marilyn's, such as the fact that her mother was institutionalized, so she grew up in foster homes, her various marriages, and affairs, and blended them with things that the author made up. The author portrays Marilyn and Norma Jean (spelled Jeane in the book) as separate personalities. In the book, Norma Jeane has to "summon" Marilyn to get through her movie roles and public appearances, which accounts for her notorious unreliability. In real life, Marilyn was known for making comments like having to "give" people Marilyn so that Marilyn was a performance she put on for the masses. The author extended that to Marilyn being a person that Norma Jeane hated and never wanted to be called in real life. The book also touches on Marilyn's abuse of prescription drugs and her own mental illness.
The book is very long, about 730 pages, and is not always the easiest thing to read. The story spans Marilyn's entire life from when she was a year or two old to her death in 1962. Interestingly, the author wrote Marilyn as being aware that she was going to die and kind of did a dance with maybe she killed herself and maybe she was murdered. There is a lot of sex in the book (it definitely touches on the rumors she slept around Hollywood), if even some of the material that was included about halfway through the book (for example, a three-way relationship with two bisexual men) makes it into the movie, it definitely will earn the NC-17 rating.
Overall, you have to take the book with a grain of salt. It is a work of fiction and not a real biography, which the author admits to up-front in the forward. The author does provide a bibliography for those who are looking for non-fiction books devoted to Marilyn's life. It definitely has enough real elements that are known about Marilyn's life (like her marriages and her hookups with JFK). Still, unless you have really read about her or seen documentaries about her life, it is hard to know what is real and what is made up. So, it is an interesting take on what portions of Marilyn's life may have been like, but nothing that should be taken too seriously.
The book is very long, about 730 pages, and is not always the easiest thing to read. The story spans Marilyn's entire life from when she was a year or two old to her death in 1962. Interestingly, the author wrote Marilyn as being aware that she was going to die and kind of did a dance with maybe she killed herself and maybe she was murdered. There is a lot of sex in the book (it definitely touches on the rumors she slept around Hollywood), if even some of the material that was included about halfway through the book (for example, a three-way relationship with two bisexual men) makes it into the movie, it definitely will earn the NC-17 rating.
Overall, you have to take the book with a grain of salt. It is a work of fiction and not a real biography, which the author admits to up-front in the forward. The author does provide a bibliography for those who are looking for non-fiction books devoted to Marilyn's life. It definitely has enough real elements that are known about Marilyn's life (like her marriages and her hookups with JFK). Still, unless you have really read about her or seen documentaries about her life, it is hard to know what is real and what is made up. So, it is an interesting take on what portions of Marilyn's life may have been like, but nothing that should be taken too seriously.
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