Blonde

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates is a sprawling, fictionalized biographical novel that reimagines the life of Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Baker, as a tragic epic of American celebrity and personal destruction. Spanning her troubled childhood marked by an unstable mother and orphanage years, her transformation into a Hollywood icon through calculated reinventions, abusive relationships, and fleeting stardom, the narrative delves into her inner turmoil, existential fragility, and the dehumanizing grip of fame. Told in fragmented, poetic prose blending fact with myth, it portrays Monroe not merely as a glamorous star but as a vulnerable artist crushed by a culture obsessed with its own illusions, culminating in her untimely death.