A review by obscuredbyclouds
Blond by Joyce Carol Oates
1.0
I was not prepared for: a) how weird this book was going to be and b) how incredibly tedious.
I'd read Joyce Carol Oates before as a teenager and had liked the books alright, but I couldn't for the life of me tell you which two out of her 50 novels it was. What I do know is that they had a normal amount of pages. Between 200 and 400 or so. "Blonde" is a 1k whopper of a novel and it does not deserve to be so long.
It's kind of written competetently but after the first 100 pages or so I already found myself not wanting to continue. Still, the reimigining of Marylin Monroe's childhood was the best part. Maybe because I think complicated family structures (her and mother's) are more interesting than the repetition of failed romantic relationships ad nauseum. And they are so weird and brutal and loveless. You never get to feel for any of the characters.
Presumably, writing this fan fiction meant that the author wanted to explore the character of Monroe? But no, she only describes her as a phenomena - which is so boring! She's seen as a dumb sex symbol and nothing else by men, when all she craves is real love. Get it? Do you get it yet? But Oates herself describes her as dumb blonde, so that often it feels more like cruel judgement than social commentary.
I could excuse all the wobbly morality of this if the novel wasn't so god damn boring.
I'd read Joyce Carol Oates before as a teenager and had liked the books alright, but I couldn't for the life of me tell you which two out of her 50 novels it was. What I do know is that they had a normal amount of pages. Between 200 and 400 or so. "Blonde" is a 1k whopper of a novel and it does not deserve to be so long.
It's kind of written competetently but after the first 100 pages or so I already found myself not wanting to continue. Still, the reimigining of Marylin Monroe's childhood was the best part. Maybe because I think complicated family structures (her and mother's) are more interesting than the repetition of failed romantic relationships ad nauseum. And they are so weird and brutal and loveless. You never get to feel for any of the characters.
Presumably, writing this fan fiction meant that the author wanted to explore the character of Monroe? But no, she only describes her as a phenomena - which is so boring! She's seen as a dumb sex symbol and nothing else by men, when all she craves is real love. Get it? Do you get it yet? But Oates herself describes her as dumb blonde, so that often it feels more like cruel judgement than social commentary.
I could excuse all the wobbly morality of this if the novel wasn't so god damn boring.