Michel Schneider (1944–2022)

Synopsis
4.25 am, 5 August 1962, West Los Angeles Police Department
'Marilyn Monroe has died of an overdose', a man's voice says dully. And when the stunned policeman asked 'What?', the same voice struggled to repeat 'Marilyn Monroe has died. She has committed suicide.'

If life were scripted like the movies, this extraordinary phone call would have been made by the most important man in Marilyn Monroe's life - Dr Ralph Greenson, her final psychoanalyst. During her last years Marilyn had come to rely on Greenson more and more. She met with him almost every day. He was her analyst, her friend and her confessor. He was the last person to see her alive, and the first to see her dead.

In this highly acclaimed novel, Marilyn's last years - and her last sessions on Dr Greenson's couch - are brilliantly recreated. This is the story of the world's most famous and elusive actress, and the world she inhabited, surrounded by such figures as Arthur Miller, Truman Capote and John Huston. It is a remarkable piece of storytelling that illuminates one of the greatest icons of the twentieth century.

Not sure what to make of this... as the author Schneider admits that,like Capote's Holly Golightly, whom her creator describes in Breakfast at Tiffany's as a "genuine phoney".

I don't think it worked as fiction, too many pages read as academic papers, it is a novel of ideas and you yearn to get closer to the enigma. Disappointing… (more)

I too found this disappointing. I was looking forward to getting to know something of the real Marilyn Monroe and instead found myself wandering aroung various miscellaneous psychoanalitical offices briefly meeting people who meant nothing to me and whom I never got to know further than their name. Maralyn appeared momentarily here and there, seeming only introduced to give popular interest to a book which was more an academic treatise than a biographic novel.

A most confusing offering which could, I am sure given the (purported) material, have been so much better. I gave up after page 141 ....… (more)

Synopsis
4.25 am, 5 August 1962, West Los Angeles Police Department
'Marilyn Monroe has died of an overdose', a man's voice says dully. And when the stunned policeman asked 'What?', the same voice struggled to repeat 'Marilyn Monroe has died. She has committed suicide.'

If life were scripted like the movies, this extraordinary phone call would have been made by the most important man in Marilyn Monroe's life - Dr Ralph Greenson, her final psychoanalyst. During her last years Marilyn had come to rely on Greenson more and more. She met with him almost every day. He was her analyst, her friend and her confessor. He was the last person to see her alive, and the first to see her dead.

In this highly acclaimed novel, Marilyn's last years - and her last sessions on Dr Greenson's couch - are brilliantly recreated. This is the story of the world's most famous and elusive actress, and the world she inhabited, surrounded by such figures as Arthur Miller, Truman Capote and John Huston. It is a remarkable piece of storytelling that illuminates one of the greatest icons of the twentieth century.

Not sure what to make of this... as the author Schneider admits that,like Capote's Holly Golightly, whom her creator describes in Breakfast at Tiffany's as a "genuine phoney".

I don't think it worked as fiction, too many pages read as academic papers, it is a novel of ideas and you yearn to get closer to the enigma. Disappointing… (more)