From :The Washinton Post
Photo : bartcop.com
THE SECRET LIFE OF MARILYN MONROE .
By J. Randy Taraborrelli
Grand Central. 560 pp. $26.99
A quarter-century ago, reviewing "Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe," by Anthony Summers, in this newspaper, I wondered whether, with the publication of what was the 39th book about her, "enough has at last been said about this sad story." Obviously my wonderings were very much in error. How many other books about her have been published between then and now I do not know, but here comes J. Randy Taraborrelli with what his publisher calls "the definitive biography . . . explosive, revelatory, and surprisingly moving."
Grand Central. 560 pp. $26.99
A quarter-century ago, reviewing "Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe," by Anthony Summers, in this newspaper, I wondered whether, with the publication of what was the 39th book about her, "enough has at last been said about this sad story." Obviously my wonderings were very much in error. How many other books about her have been published between then and now I do not know, but here comes J. Randy Taraborrelli with what his publisher calls "the definitive biography . . . explosive, revelatory, and surprisingly moving."
You will not be surprised to learn that in fact "The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe" is none of the above. Taraborrelli, a freelance journalist who specializes in gossipy fan bios of supermarket tabloid favorites -- his subjects have included Madonna, Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Ross and (of course) Jackie Kennedy -- stakes his shaky claim to originality on two aspects of Monroe's life: the three women who were central to her troubled childhood and adolescence, and the strong current of mental instability that ran through her mother's side of the family. But these matters are well known to anyone who has followed Monroe's life and career, and there is nothing "explosive" or even "revelatory" in Taraborrelli's discussion of them.
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