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The Life And Opinions Of Maf The Dog, And Of His Friend Marilyn Monroe (2010)

by Andrew O'Hagan(Favorite Author)

2.77 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0151013721 (ISBN13: 9780151013722)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

review 1: This is a very enjoyable novel written from the perspective of a clever clogs dog who has absorbed a very erudite standard of education simply through licking people and picking up their thoughts - wish it was as easy for me. The strongest parts of the book are the characterisations of a variety of Hollywood types, New York's pretentious actor-types and some UFO-gazing rednecks. I ended up hating Frank Sinatra and, quite literally, crying for Marilyn Monroe for whom the book is a sweet and heartfelt elegy. Where it doesn't work comes from the scholarly/masturbatory/pseudo-intellectual drawing room conversations between the animals but if you skip them and get back to the story it still works.Andrew O'Hagan is a clever writer whose books I have always enjoyed - this one was... more maybe not as good as some of the others but it's well worth picking up.
review 2: This is a book which had been sitting on the shelf for a couple of years. Originally it was a gift from a friend to my wife although she has not read it either. regardless it was sitting there with a picture of Marilyn and a cute dog on the front cover and my thought was you cannot go wrong with that combination.While I enjoyed certain aspects of the book especially the sections which included cameo appearances by a number of known Hollywood stars such as Sinatra, Peter Lawford and Nathalie Wood, I found that overall the book was a disappointment. Maybe I have reached the outer limits of talking animals and in this book all animals talk or at least think. Surprisingly all have an incredible intellect especially in the areas of art, politics and philosophy. Give the title of the book, and the cover illustration I was perhaps expecting a bit more probing of Marilyn's state of mind and an examination of her life-style - albeit fictionalized. There was very little of this/ I was also expecting a bit more whimsy given the prevalence of animal talk and thought, but the book lacked that elem less

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