SOON TO BE A NETFLIX FILM A mesmerising novel of the most enduring cultural icon of the 20th century, Blonde is a deeply moving portrait of the woman who became Marilyn Monroe.
Who was Norma Jeane Baker?
In Blonde we are given an intimate, unsparing vision of the woman who became Marilyn Monroe: the child who visits the cinema with her mother; the orphan whose mother is declared mad; the woman who changes her name to become an actress; the fated celebrity, lover, comedienne, muse and icon.
Joyce Carol Oates tells an epic American story of how a fragile, gifted young woman makes and remakes her identity, surviving against crushing odds, perpetually in conflict and intensely driven. Here is the very essence of the individual, hungry and needy for love: from an elusive mother, from a mysterious, distant father and from a succession of lovers and husbands.
Blonde is a brilliant and deeply moving portrait of a culture hypnotised by its own myths and the shattering reality of the personal effects it had on the woman who became Marilyn Monroe.
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the LA Times Book Award (2018) and the Jerusalem Prize (2019). Her books include We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, Carthage, A Book of American Martyrs, Hazards of Time Travel, My Life as a Rat and Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. She is Professor of Humanities at Princeton University.
Title: Blonde
Author: Joyce Carol Oates
ISBN: 9781841153728
Binding:
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication Date: 2001-03-05
Number of Pages: 752
Weight: 0.6942 kg
'Nobody has ever caught Marilyn more brilliantly in words than Oates' Sunday Times
'This masterpiece about Marilyn Monroe's life is audacious, gripping and clever. A meditation on fame, exile and lovelessness, but most importantly a siren shriek against the commodification of women through the decades' Rose Tremain
'A fabulous reinvention of the life of a fabulous reinvention, and a cracking page-turner to boot' Evening Standard
'A torrentially imaginative, compulsively readable tour de force' Sunday Telegraph
'A mighty - and a mesmerizing - book' Elaine Showalter, Literary Review
'If you haven't read Joyce Carol Oates before, start here, and now' Julie Myerson, Independent
'Blonde is an epic achievement, a masterpiece, a piece of art so shatteringly well-conceived and lavishly-wrought that at times it almost does not seem like a mere book...If this book doesn't catapult Joyce Carol Oates into British best sellerdom, nothing will' Independent on Sunday
'Novelists such as John Updike, Philip Roth, Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer slug it out for the title of the Great American Novelist. But maybe they're wrong. Maybe, just maybe, the Great American Novelist is a woman' Herald
