
Blonde
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Narrated by:
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Jayne Atkinson
About this listen
In her most ambitious work to date, Joyce Carol Oates, one of America's most distinguished writers, reimagines the inner, poetic, and spiritual life of Norma Jeane Baker, the child, the woman, the fated celebrity, and tells the story in Norma Jeane's own voice: startling, rich, and shattering.
Drawing on biographical and historical sources, Joyce Carol Oates evokes the distinct consciousness of the woman and the unsparing reflection of the myth, writing as she has never written before, ecstatic, completely absorbed, inhabited as if by the spirit of her extraordinary subject. Rich with psychological insight and disturbing irony, this mesmerizing narrative illumines Norma Jeane's lonely childhood, wrenching adolescence, and the creation of Marilyn Monroe.
With fresh insights into the heart of a celebrity culture hypnotized by its own myths, Blonde is a sweeping novel about the elusive magic of a woman, the lasting legacy of a star, and the heartbreak behind the creation of the most evocative icon of the 20th century.
©2001 Joyce Carol Oates (P)2001 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Performance
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Story
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The Apology of Socrates, by Plato, is the dialogue that presents the speech of legal self-defense, which Socrates presented at his trial for impiety and corruption, in 399 BC. Specifically, The Apology of Socrates is a defense against the charges of “corrupting the youth” and “not believing in the same gods as the city, but in other gods which are novel” to Athens.
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👍🏻
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Critic reviews
"Atkinson narrates Oates's fictional biography of Marilyn Monroe in an intense, slightly husky voice that immediately grabs and holds the listener's attention." (Publishers Weekly)
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- By Meg on 06-22-20
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The Virgin in the Rose Bower
- The Mysteries of Winterthurn, Part One
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In this first part of her Gothic mystery trillogy, best-selling author Joyce Carol Oates introduces Xavier Kilgarvan, a romantic hero and amateur detective. He must discover who has murdered an innocent babe while it slept in his mother’s arms. This turn-of-the-century tale of monstrous deeds and heart-stopping suspense will leave you eagerly looking for the next Kilgarvan case.
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A Horror Noir Satire of the 19th Century
- By Michael on 06-24-12
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The Falls
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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A man climbs over the railings and plunges into Niagara Falls. A newlywed, he has left behind his wife, Ariah Erskine, in the honeymoon suite the morning after their wedding. "The Widow Bride of The Falls", as Ariah comes to be known, begins a relentless, seven-day vigil in the mist, waiting for his body to be found.
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Clean Out Your Ears
- By Harry I. Shuman on 07-26-05
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Cryptonomicon
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 42 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the US Navy - is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Watrehouse and Detachment 2702 - commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe - is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. In the present, Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia....
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Two thirds through and quit
- By Joshua on 06-20-16
By: Neal Stephenson
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Martyr!
- A Novel
- By: Kaveh Akbar
- Narrated by: Arian Moayed
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest.
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One of the best novels I have ever read/heard.
- By James on 04-06-24
By: Kaveh Akbar
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Ordinary Grace
- By: William Kent Krueger
- Narrated by: Rich Orlow
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning author William Kent Krueger has gained an immense fan base for his Cork O’Connor series. In Ordinary Grace, Krueger looks back to 1961 to tell the story of Frank Drum, a boy on the cusp of manhood. A typical 13-year-old with a strong, loving family, Frank is devastated when a tragedy forces him to face the unthinkable - and to take on a maturity beyond his years.
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Wonderful Wonderful - In Every Way
- By tooonce72 on 03-29-13
FARCICLE STORY
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A Literary Triumph
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Couldn't stop listening
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The recreation of her first date with Arthur Miller, for example, is a high point. Her attempts to create great literature don't always work, for example, the opening scene with the messenger boy delivering death.
When it's good it couldn't be better
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What you do gain is insight into the early Hollywood heydays where the studio controlled all and starlets were merely chattel. If this interests you, you will enjoy "Blonde." As a fictionalized biography, Blonde covers most aspects of Marilyn's life yet she still comes off as vacuous in the book as she did in the movies. As with any novel, the key is in having a charater you care about. It's hard to care for Marilyn. I even listened to the interview with the author regarding her character development, but while I could see Oates' craft in the novel, "Blonde" was only fair.
Conflicted points of view
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Amazing writing and narration, what a treat!
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Exceptional
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This book is a FICTIONAL BIOGRAPHY. That deserves to be in all caps because people seem to not realize it. Even though this is a work of fiction, you can't help but think that some of this actually happened to her given what we do know to be true about Norma Jeane's past.
THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU IF: You're a fan of fictional biographies and Hollywood icons.
Great Fictional Bio!
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As it stands, this abridgement was fine. JCO makes a few speculative leaps about the inner workings of Norma Jean cum Marilyn, that feel spot-on. It was the first book I've read where someone really tried to understand the mechanisms of Marilyn's genius. ...and she as a genius at what she did, unquestionably. She was just so good; so talented; so funny.
When JCO comes to Marilyn's sing-song at JFK's birthday I stopped listening and watched the footage on Youtube. She's clearly a little tipsy, and perhaps out of her league in that den of Ivy League privilege, but they were only more educated than Marilyn. They were not smarter, and they might scorn her, but they absolutely bowed to her genius too. All she does is take off a coat and take a breath, and the room is hers. It's incredible.
Anyway, I don't know if I'll go back and read the unabridged version now. Marilyn had a hard life, and this is an equally hard book. It's brilliant, but not pretty.
My Own Fault for Not Noticing
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Abridged!
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