If you wanted to write about Marilyn Monroe, how would you go about it? The pile of biographies, memoirs and novels about poor, sad Marilyn is already teetering. How could you make something new of her life? Clever Andrew O’Hagan has come up with an answer: by writing as her pet dog.
How the hound came to be in her possession is a terrific story in itself. Maf, a Maltese terrier, was given to Marilyn by Frank Sinatra (the dog’s name was her sly reference to Sinatra’s alleged mafia connections). Sinatra got the dog from Natalie Wood’s mother, who regularly travelled to Britain to scoop up puppies, in much the way that contemporary Hollywood stars now trawl the globe for orphaned children. Bizarrely, Natalie Wood’s mother apparently obtained the pup from a litter raised at Charleston farmhouse in Sussex, the home of Bloomsburyites Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell.
From these scant facts, O’Hagan has constructed a sparkling, high-falutin’ caper of a novel.
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