It’s not sophisticated. It’s just pulsating and bombshelled and well-cast. So I read it in two sessions on the couch. The augur of my literary beginnings presses me down again, back to Newman Library, between the radiators, consumed by tragic Hollywood glamour.

I thought the book would somehow delve deeper, that the last act reveal wouldn’t have been so oddly telegraphed from page one, when it was supposed to be life-changing. Maybe it related to the fact that Laura Lamont already knew what was coming, way deep down. Or it was lazy writing. Who cares. It’s lovely little books like these that will collect sand, which is too bad cause it came out last Tuesday.

At one point early in the narrative I almost skipped to the center leaves, expecting plates of the star at every age. Life in pictures, am I right? It did feel like a biography of Ava, or Dorothy, or Jean. The best thing about it is that it isn’t challenging, just perfectly rendered inside the bombshell dreambook.

I give it five out of five Marilyn Monroes hanging on a teenager’s wall.