'Marilyn Monroe, a name known to every generation! Whether sublime, touching, or pathetic, she personified the fantasies of the secret world of Hollywood. But behind the glittering myth was a woman whose life was anything but charmed. It is this singular life, from her turbulent childhood, via her tumultuous love life and her proximity to the highest spheres of society, to her tragic final days, that the authors have retraced here in vivid detail. Full of humour, the “Stars of History” collection offers a fresh new look at the legends of cinema.'
Marilyn Monroe is a name that pretty much everyone will recognise; even if you couldn't name a single film she'd ever been in you know who she is. But one thing that I realised when I came to reading this book was that really, I knew nothing about her. Her life was nothing like I was expecting, especially her early years, and Stars of History: Marilyn Monroe manages to condense her story down in a manageable way.
I've read another of this series before, Stars of History: Charlie Chaplin, and found that that book covered the career of Chaplin more than it did his personal life, but in this book that seems to be flipped somewhat. A large section of the book is given over to Marilyn as a young woman, when she was still just Norma Jean, trying to make her way through a difficult childhood. We start to get inside her head a little, and focus on the emotional difficulties that she faced.
Even when the book moves forward through time and she becomes a famous movie star we focus less on her career and the roads she made as a star, and instead focus on what effect that had on her as a person. We see hoe frustrated she was at not getting the roles she wanted, and how that went on to effect her mental health and her behaviour.
The book doesn't sugar coat the difficulties that Marilyn faced, and makes sure that we see how these issues impacted her. We don;t just get a hand-wave saying 'this thing made her job on the set difficult', but instead we see her at home, suffering and saddened because of what's happening. This book really hammered home that despite her wealth and fame she was still just a regular person, one who can suffer just like you and me.
However, there are a few issues that I had with the book, though this mainly comes down to my not feeling it was long enough. I wanted more pages, in part so that some of the gorgeous artwork from Christian Paty could have more room and been showcased more, but also so that we could have slowed down a bit and spent more time with these people, rather than rushing from one major event to another. These books are great for giving you a broad overview of a person's life, but can sometimes feel like they're moving at breakneck speed, and that was certainly the case here at times.
This book won't completely satisfy your craving to learn more about Marilyn Monroe, and I think if you're anything like myself you'll come away wanting to read a bigger book all about her to be able to spend more time on the little details this book sometimes has to move past quickly; however, it will give you a really good overview of her life, and leave you knowing a good deal about her. This is probably the perfect gateway book if you want to know more about this figure from history, but aren't sure if you want to pick up a huge book about her.
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