June 11, 2012
Journalist Schneider works hard to imitate nonfiction in this choppy, circular, yet intriguing depiction of Marilyn Monroe’s relationship with her last psychoanalyst. Focusing on the final three months of Monroe’s life in the summer of 1962 when she was seeing analyst-to-the-stars Dr. Ralph Greenson daily, professionally and socially, the book uses real and fictional quotations and an overbearing homage to film structure, lingo, and framing to portray the pair’s co-dependence. Though Monroe and Greenson were not lovers, their lives became deeply entwined: by the end, Greenson assumed the roles of father figure, manager, physician, and acting coach to the troubled star he hoped to help complete the film she was working on. Greenson was the last person to speak with Monroe before she died, the first to see her dead, and one of many suspects fingered by the press in a variety of conspiracy theories; when she died, she pulled the doctor into her vortex. Schneider evokes beautiful images and a clear sense of Monroe’s wounded, haunting presence, but in the end, it’s voyeurism more than anything else that draws the reader through the book. Agent: Andrea Joyce, Canongate.