100 Best Books of the Decade: 87. Blonde: A Novel by Joyce Carol Oates

87. Blonde: A Novel by Joyce Carol Oates, 2000

I really like Marilyn Monroe, I think she was a very interesting, complicated woman and it’s a tragedy that the world lost her when it did. I saw this book in a bargain bin of a bookstore when I was 16 or so, and I knew by the cover what it was about, even though it was a novel and even though the names had all been changed. Blonde is essentially a novel about the inner life and workings of Marilyn Monroe, actually, the woman behind the image that was Marilyn Monroe. It is heartwrenching and real, a painful but cathartic read. Whenever I watch one of her films now, I just want to reach out into the screen and hold her hand and talk to her. Oates created a beautiful piece of fiction about her life but it emotionally fills up the gaps that lie between the viewer and the beautiful woman on the flickering screen.