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Summary
Summary
Meet Maf: The hilariously opinionated, well-read, politically scrappy, and complex canine companion to Marilyn Monroe.
In November 1960, Frank Sinatra gave Marilyn Monroe a dog. His name was Mafia Honey, or Maf for short. Born in the household of Vanessa Bell, brought to the United States by Natalie Wood's mother, and given as a Christmas present to Marilyn the winter after she separated from Arthur Miller, Maf was with Marilyn for the last two years of her life, first in New York and then in Los Angeles, and he had as much instinct for celebrity and psychoanalysis as he did for Liver Treat with a side order of National Biscuits. Marylin took him to meet President Kennedy and to Hollywood restaurants, to department stores, to interviews, and to Mexico for her divorce. Through Maf's eyes, we see an altogether original and wonderfully clever portrait of the woman behind the icon--and the dog behind the woman.
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
Maf (short for Mafia Honey), a Maltese Bichon born in Scotland, gives us insights into his privileged lifeand discourses on everything from politics to psychiatry to contemporary artas he passes as a gift from Frank Sinatra to Marilyn Monroe.Maf is brought over to Los Angeles by a Mrs. Gurdin, who turns out to be the mother of Natalie Wood (ne Natasha Gurdin). While Maf starts his new life in the plush surroundings of Sherman Oaks, he quickly moves on to Sinatra and then to Marilyn Monroe. Maf's cuteness, affability and portability make him an ideal companion for Marilyn but also provide the means for him to overhear intimate conversations that she has with a number of her famous friends. O'Hagan gives us a sharp picture of American cultural life in the early 1960s, where celebrities parade through parties, get-togethers and soires that Marilyn attends. Making appearances in this noveland sometimes participating in rather bitchy (no pun intended) conversationsare Alfred Kazin, Lillian Hellman, Carson McCullers, Angie Dickinson, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Edmund Wilson, Dwight MacDonald, Noel Annan, Frank O'Hara, Irving Howe, Lee Strasberg and a host of others. Maf absorbs (and retells) it all with canine verve and abandon, offering his own considerable insights into the mix as well. For example, he compares Marilyn's admiration of her own reflection to "the central panel of Hans Memling's remarkable triptych, Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation, in which Vanity is pictured with her little white lapdog, a model of companionship." Maf is not only an intellectual, but he persuades us that his owner Marilyn is as well, for she spends much of her time reading books like The Brothers Karamazov and is eager to find academics with whom to discuss this classic. We also get glimpses into Marilyn's insecurity and dejection about not having a father, for Maf recounts some of her psychiatric sessions with Marianne Kris, wife of psychoanalyst/art historian Ernst Kris.An unusual, quirky and fun read.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.