This book about the person we got to know as Marilyn Monroe is heavy read, Joyce Carol Oates leaves no room for joy or hope while telling her story (and all of us know the ending already). Anyway, you keep on reading in horrified fascination about Norma Jeane Baker’s transformation into the artifial Hollywood product called Marilyn Monroe. Oates makes no difference between facts and fiction when she builds her story out of inner monologues, narratives by different people, real and fictious quotes of books Norma Jeane read, poems she wrote and comments by contemporary witnesses. This is definitely one of Oate’s best books (it made me for the first time think about Marilyn as a real person and not just the cliché of a blonde) but maybe it is not your next holiday reading.