The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe

Description

'Ferociously smart. A rare combination of guilty pleasure and intellectual insight' VOGUE 'Perceptive. Refreshing. Tears away layers of false readings and conspiracy theories' NEW YORK TIMES Intricately researched. Churchwell's Marilyn is a complex, well-rounded creature in the best sense - the human sense' OBSERVER There are many Marilyns: sex goddess and innocent child, crafty manipulator and dumb blonde, screen legend and Hollywood victim. In this incisive and subtle book, Sarah Churchwell looks at how the stories we tell have trivialised a woman we supposedly adore, and at what they reveal about our attitudes towards sex symbols and icons, to women, death, biography and Marilyn herself.

SARAH CHURCHWELL is Professor of American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She is the author of Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream, Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby and The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe. Her literary journalism has appeared widely in newspapers and she comments regularly on arts, culture and politics for television and radio, where appearances include Question Time, Newsnight and The Review Show. She has judged many literary prizes, including the 2017 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction and the 2014 Man Booker Prize, and she was a co-winner of the 2015 Eccles British Library Writer's Award.

Inventive and entertaining ... Churchwell seems to have invented an altogether new form of biography * LITERARY REVIEW * A splendid metabiography of one of the great icons of the twentieth century -- BOOKS OF THE YEAR * SUNDAY TELEGRAPH * Refreshing ... [Tears] away layers of false readings and conspiracy theories * NEW YORK TIMES * Ferociously smart ... A rare combination of guilty pleasure and intellectual insight * VOGUE * Untangles the threads of Monroe's life story, isolating the essential cornerstones of the Monroe myth * INDEPENDENT *