THE LAST DAYS OF MARILYN MONROE

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?