Rating: 
Summary: Awful and pretentious, eh?
Review: I kept from reading this novel because of all the terrible reviews it was getting all over the place; but then I decided no novel could be that bad. I was wrong--it's worse. The prose is at times undecipherable, and I kept reading only to see whether it would become even worse. It did. Ostensibly the story of Norma Jeane who became Marilyn Monroe, it amounts to drivel, hot-house imaginings about another's sexual life, pretentious pronouncements about acting and just about everything else Oates can conjure up, including (really!) stuffed birds. And why does every character have to end sentences with, "Eh?" .... And pretentious? Oh, my, just glance through all the italicized passages and you'll get an idea, just a hint, of how awful the whole thing is. I've never read any of Oates' other novels, dozens and dozens, but this one is enough. More than enough.
Rating: 
Summary: It's Not Just About Marilyn
Review: This book, an amazing feat of reality-based fiction,was alternatively horrifying, thought-provoking, and ultimately supremely tragic. Any reader who approaches it needs to bear in mind that it is a work of literature and, as such, requires an open mind to be receptive to its message. Anyone expecting all the facts in perfect order,or expecting some lurid Hollywood tale in Screenplay language will be disappointed, because that's not what this book is about. It's the story of an American legend, a screen star and sex symbol,but it's also much more than that. It also speaks of the treatment of women by our society, which values beauty over brains, by examining the loss of one woman's innocence, which leads to the destruction (literally and figuratively)of her as a person. Norma Jeane/Marilyn becomes Everywoman. The men who are individuals (for better or worse) have names; the men who are symbols have titles. It doesn't matter what their names are or were, or if she really slept with them or not. They all had a role to play in MM's rise and fall; they all had power over her. Her public had power over her, too, and this also filled her with fear. She moves through her life trying to maintain her identity, begging people to see her as Norma Jeane, but despairing that all they can see is Marilyn, who isn't real. Ultimately, Marilyn wins out; this is the ultimate tragedy of the life of a legend. It's almost a Shakespearean tragedy; as a matter of fact,if he'd been alive at the time, Shakespeare probably would have written a play about MM. Her tale would have been just too good for him to resist. Yes,it's long, and yes, it probably could have used some more editing, but I found it fascinating and came away with a new understanding not only of the goddess we call Marilyn, but also of our society's fear of sex and its paradoxical fascination with,and ultimate destruction of,the sex symbol that we loved to death.
Rating:
Summary: This heartbreaker of a book
Review: Marilyn Monroe died when I was in my late teens. It has always intrigued me why her legend lives on and on in a world where beautiful blondes are as plentiful and ephemeral as butterflies. What was it about Marilyn Monroe that has inspired the books, the songs, the photographic retrospectives decades after she's been gone? Having just finished "Blonde" by Joyce Carol Oates, I think I know.From her first to her last breath, the fictionalized life of Norma Jeane Baker exudes tragedy. Her childhood is brutal, puberty puts her at risk, her early marriage is a fiasco, her treatment by her agent, her photographer, and the studio bosses unpardonably exploitive. When she finally achieves fame, Norma Jeane is too fragile and broken to savor it. She becomes her insecurities. Even those who love her and wish her well (husband playwright Arthur Miller) can't save her. She can only bring them down in her self destructive nose dive. If there is any truth to her treatment by President John Kennedy, he was the most dispicable of all. Oates never uses the image of a candle in the wind made famous by Elton John, but the metaphor works. Norma Jeane, aka Marilyn Monroe, never ceases to be a fascinating case study. Towards the end the writing gets a little sloppy and the reader grows impatient for the author to get on with the end, which one knows will be horrible, and yet when it happens it will break your heart . You are sorry the book has ended because you can never get too much of the central character, her amazing life story and the stormy times in which she lived.
Rating: 
Summary: Briliant thriller
Review: I was looking pretty much forward to read this book, I read and heard a lot about it in Europe (I'm from Berlin, Germany) and bought it in NY. Really, that night I could not stop reading, this book is so emotinal and sad and lovely and kind of real same time. Joyce did a very good job not trying to just describe Marylin's ways/disasters but interpreting and getting down to MM's self distructive mind and behaviour maybe caused through her 'past live' Keep in mind: this book is a novel and it's a very good novel about a hollywood-girlie. This book is a real thriller. You have to read it.
Rating:
Summary: Pretentious, badly written exploitation
Review: There seems to be a confusion about the wide negative reaction to this novel. Surely the reaction of adults is not based on the graphic sexuality here, which amounts only to exaggerated and heated fantasies about another's life. There are many novels much more graphic than this one, fine novels. No, the reaction of disgust--and that includes mine--is the sheer, unabashed exploitation of a real woman by another woman. Of course, the book is presented as a novel, but it wants to have it both ways, using real names and identifiable events, radically altering actual lives for an imposed view of the movie star. Then there's Ms. Oates' claim that her hand was guided by Norma Jeane, that she, Ms. Oates, came to feel like the blonde movie star. Ms. Oates feeling like Norma Jeane/Marilyn Monroe is preposterous and embarrassing! Beyond all that, even a cursory look at the novel reveals some of the sloppiest writing being published today. Experimental? Literary? Nonsense. The fact is that some of Ms. Oates' rambling sentences and lofty pronouncements simply do not make sense and often result in the only humor in the novel, unintended humor. The novel does, however, provide the answer to Ms. Oates' protigious output. Based on ample evidence in this so-called novel, she simply does not revise. At its best, "Blonde" reads like a rambling first draft by a writer of inflated reputation. As Truman Capote is reported to have said about another writer, "This isn't writing, it's typin'." Ms. Oates obviously types a lot and very fast.
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking mythology of the twentieth century
Review: Ignore what those strange people have said in previous reviews. I suppose all they want to read comes from the Bible or Family Circle and that they all want to believe that everyone treats each other fairly. This is a book for intelligent, open-minded, free-ranging thinkers. This is a spellbinding, sometimes shocking, sometimes deeply poetic book, as compelling to read as genre fiction, yet playing with the boundaries of prose as does Joyce or Dylan Thomas wihtout ever becoming abtuse or difficult. It is also a vivid thumbnail evocation of the society and era that Monroe lived in. Yes Marilyn is exploited here - but not by Oates - but by those around her. This is where the extraordinary metaphorical resonance of this book arises from, Norma Jean/Marilyn, is an everyman/woman figure - who in innocence faces the world only to be done over yet again, and yet with wisdom and clear thinking manages to salvage something. If we are honest we see the metaphorical patterns that Oates traces recurring time and again. There is something truly poignant about this evocation of a courageous and radiant young woman whose faith and hope is exploited at every count, and yet who can make her talent shine through despite the forces ranged against her. Oates' evocation of Marylin and her films are also poetic and perceptive and she uncannily evokes Marylin's ability to challenge the boundaries between the profound and the tawdry. If you think that there is more to life and art than a verse from Helen Steiner Rice Christmas card, this is the book for you It by no means diminishes Monroe rather I as a reader end end up feeling deep compassion and sadness at every step of this already-known story. There is something poetic in this foreboding
Rating:
Summary: Fit for National Enquirer
Review: Much of this sordid, messily written novel would not be out of place in the National Enquirer, although it would take hundreds of issues to publish. The book--difficult to call it a novel--is endless, and the story it tells, purporting to be that of a fictional Marilyn Monroe/Norman Jeane is at best preposterous, at worst violative and insulting. Although pretesented as fiction, it uses the bare bones of the Marilyn Monroe story on which to hang all its heated fantasies, mostly dirty conjectures that make one wonder why the author harbors so much anger against the movie star. Because she was beautiful? The rest of the characters here are equally impossible, especially an imaginary menage that Oates conjectures with two gay men, both so nastily portrayed that one wonders what attitudes underlie their creation. All would be moot if the book were well written, but it isn't. There are passages that are impossible to decipher logically. And repetition! Does Oates read over her work any more? Is that the reason why she is so prolific? Is it possible that the Empress wears no clothes?
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: Joyce Carol Oates is a wonderful writer...her imagination seems to be endless. Read this book and you will know why she is considered one of America's finest. There are no words to describe this book other than magnificent, thought-provoking, addictive, and a wonder. I know this is definitely an unworthy review but I just want people to give this novel a chance and enjoy without another person explain why it is a great book.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful and terrible
Review: I slowly am reading this book--savoring, savoring and at times gasping out loud at the incidents recorded and the images created. I am a Marilyn devotee; Ms. Oates captures in small strokes the psyche and shattered person/cinematic icon this wonderful creature was and is through her movies. The doll with the blank, bright blue eyes and the frozen smile given to Marilyn as a child is an image that continues to appear throughout the book--this is Marilyn as well as the person who could suddenly be "on" for an audience of any kind.
Rating:
Summary: Worst Book of Year Award
Review: Of course I'd heard about Joyce Carol Oates; she has quite a reputation. I marveled that she could write several books a year, and I wondered how. Eventually, I would read one of her novels, and now I have, "Blonde." I understand several things now, and others bewilder me. What I understand is how she's able to write so much--she doesn't revise, probably doesn't even go back to read what she wrote. It's impossible otherwise to read messy sentences that don't make sense, repetition over and over and over, incredibly stilted writing. Apparently and for some reason her reputation has made her some kind of untouchable writer, who is just simply praised and given prizes. I doubt that those who praise this novel and propose it for awards even bothered to read it. It surprises me that a novel as badly written and offensive as this, purporting to be an "illumination" of Norma Jeane, even got published--I know, I know it was because Oates wrote it. It's a really brazen story that pretends to follow Norma Jeane from an orphanage to stardom as Marilyn Monroe. In the process, Oates degrades the great movie star to the point that one wants to throw the book down; but continues to read to see just how far the author's resentment of a beautiful woman can go. Pretty far. There are scenes that repel, and when you think the author can't heap any more humiliation on her subject (or victim), she comes up with more. On top of all this, I've read that Oates actually claims some kind of mystical possession by Norma Jeane, that she guided her hand to write this. That is absurd, of course; and that Oates would pretend to know what it felt like to be the startlingly beautiful movie star is utterly unbelievable and cheeky. But there you are; this book comes from a writer who has, for some odd reason, been in effect canonized, and is dutifully praised. I doubt that even her editor read this trashy novel I can think of one prize this book would deserve, though: Worst Book of the Year, and surely it will be a contender for worst book of the decade.
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