The Life And Opinions Of Maf The Dog And Of His Friend Marilyn Monroe

Given as a Christmas present to Marilyn Monroe, Maf the dog provides keen insight into the world of the Hollywood starlet during the last two years of her life.

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.

In November 1960, Frank Sinatra gave Marilyn Monroe a dog. His name was Maf. He had an instinct for the twentieth century. For politics. For psychoanalysis. For literature. For interior decoration. This is his story. Maf (short for Mafia) the dog was with Marilyn Monroe for the last two years of her life. Not only a picaresque hero himself, Maf was also a scholar of the adventuring rogue in literature and art—witnessing the rise of America's new liberalism, civil rights, the space race—and he was Marilyn's constant companion. Set in the the early 1960s, this joyful literary comedy, full of wit and pathos, features the celebrities and literati of the day, in New York and Hollywood. It is a fascinating fictional take on one of the most extraordinary periods of the twentieth century. The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe transports us back to a moment when the worlds of politics, film, and art collided, and the decade that came to be known as "the Sixties" was born.

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.

The Canadian debut of the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Our Fathers and Mayflies. In a small Scottish parish in a post-industrial town by the sea, an English priest with secrets in his own past becomes stalked by the fear of scandal, class hatred, and lost ideals. When Father David Anderton takes over a Scottish parish, not everyone is ready to accept him. Over the spring and summer of 2003, Father David befriends two young, troubled students, Mark and Lisa. Their natural energy and response to the world bring out his own feelings of protectiveness, as well as longings for parts of himself—and his past—that he has come to lose. This relationship and the way it develops leads to the book’s climax, as Father David finds himself facing accusations of abuse. Told from the point of view of Father David, we feel, beneath his need for order and emotional distance, the passionate undercurrents that have brought him to where he is. In this riveting novel, where every word counts, Andrew O’Hagan’s brilliant writing leads us into a story of art and politics, love and faith. Be Near Me possesses a depth of feeling and a literary artistry that render it O’Hagan’s masterpiece.

** From the author of Mayflies ** 'A beautiful, elegaic work . . . This should be required reading for everybody.' Ian Rankin Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Our Fathers is a powerful reclamation of the past from one of Britain's most accomplished literary novelists. Hugh Bawn, modern Scottish hero and legendary social reformer, lies dying in one of the high-rise tower blocks he helped establish. His grandson Jamie comes home to watch over him, and it is Jamie who tells the story of their family, of three generations of pride and delusion, of nationality and strong drink, of Catholic faith and the end of the old left. It is a tale of dark hearts and modern houses - of three men in search of Utopia.

An unforgettable coming-of-age novel that becomes a profound mediation on life, death, and lifelong friendship. Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life. In the summer of 1986, in a small Scottish town, James and Tully ignite a brilliant friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently. Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news--news that forces the life-long friends to confront their own mortality head-on. What follows is an incredibly moving examination of the responsibilities and obligations we have to those we love. Mayflies is at once a finely-tuned drama about the delicacy and impermanence of human connection and an urgent inquiry into some of the most important questions of all: Who are we? What do we owe to our friends? And what does it mean to love another person amidst tragedy?

A BBC Two Between the Covers Pick 'A tragicomic masterpiece' Daily Telegraph All that stands between one man and murder by the mafia is a penguin. Viktor is an aspiring writer in Ukraine with only Misha, his pet penguin, for company. Although Viktor would prefer to write short stories, he earns a living composing obituaries for a newspaper. He longs to see his work published, yet the subjects of his obituaries continue to cling to life. But when Viktor opens the newspaper to see his work in print for the first time, his pride swiftly turns to terror. Viktor and Misha have been drawn into a trap from which there appears to be no escape. 'A striking portrait of post-Soviet isolation... In this bleak moral landscape Kurkov manages to find ample refuge for his dark humour' New York Times