Marilyn's Last Sessions

Book excerpt: 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.