Thank you to Candlewick Press for sending me a copy in exchange for my honest review.
In a novel in verse, an award-winning author offers an eye-opening look at the life of Marilyn Monroe. From the day she was born into a troubled home to her reigning days as a Hollywood icon, Marilyn Monroe (née Norma Jeane Mortenson) lived a life that was often defined by others. Revisiting Marilyn's often traumatic early life--foster homes, loneliness, sexual abuse, teen marriage--through a hard-won, meteoric rise to stardom that brought with it exploitation, pill dependency, and depression, the narrative continues through Marilyn's famous performance at JFK's birthday party, three months before her death. This verse biography of Marilyn Monroe is an unexpected gem! I think this is the first biography-in-poetry I’ve read & reviewed here, so let’s dive in! I didn’t know that much about Marilyn’s life before I read this, and it did a great job of emulating her voice and telling her story at the same time. The novel is in Marilyn’s perspective, which makes it easier to sympathize with her and take her off of the celebrity pedestal. I definitely enjoyed some of the poems more than others—a few felt truly poetic but occasionally I’d find one that would have made more sense as a paragraph. I think overall the format worked for me, though, and it’s definitely more approachable than a regular biography. I liked feeling like I was really hearing from Marilyn, and Weatherford did a great job “erasing the author,” as it were, so I commend her for that. Some of my favorite poems in the novel dealt with Marilyn’s struggle with her “Norma Jeane" self vs. her “Marilyn” self. She felt most at home whenever she was performing or in the public eye, which I think is the opposite of how many celebrities feel nowadays, what with how easy it is for fans to become internet stalkers. Marilyn also had an exceedingly difficult childhood, and watching her make her own decisions and develop agency over the book is truly powerful. She advocated for herself with film studios, even founding a production company so she could choose the roles she liked best. She kept her modeling career when her first husband wanted her to be a homemaker. She loved to read. My favorite poem was “Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover,” about Marilyn’s thirst for knowledge which is little-known about her. Despite how most people see her, she loved to read and collect books. I think there’s something remarkable about how she chose not to fall completely in line with her surroundings, and recognized that reading widely could be a tool to connect more with others and herself. It saddens me that Marilyn’s not remembered more for her desire to grow past the “sexpot” stereotype she was stuck with. She wanted badly to star in intellectual roles and to be thought of as more than the Blonde Bombshell. Others poems fell flat. I think I have trouble connecting to free-verse poetry because occasionally it feels like a paragraph with random line breaks added, which I feel defeats the purpose of poetry: to let form help tell the story. As mentioned above, some of this novel would have been better served as mixed-media, where we could have the story told in verse where it makes sense and prose where it does not. My only other gripe is with the overall design of the book—I’m not sure if this is different in finished copies, but the images in the background of the ARCs seemed unnecessary to me. Mostly abstract, they didn’t add visual interest or play with the forms of the poems, so I found those distracting. This is personal, though, and didn’t really affect my perception of the content. I’d highly recommend picking up this verse biography—any film buffs among us will enjoy the breakdown of Marilyn’s movie roles! 3/5 stars.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
The BaronessHey, I'm Shreya! I love to read, write, travel, and drink tea. Disclosure: I am an affiliate of bookshop.org and I will earn a small commission if you click the above link and make a purchase.
Categories
All
Archives
June 2023
|