Alma H. BondBesprekingen

I received this book from Alma H. Bond, Ph.D, and Goodreads. As a major fan of Marilyn Monroe, I was so excited to receive this book. ~Review to come.~ Enjoyed it.


If, like me, one is a major fan of Marilyn Monroe, one can never seem to get enough information, read all the books available, see all the thousands of pictures of Marilyn. MARILYN MONROE. Oh, lovely Marilyn!! I found this book on Goodreads and couldn't help myself. I HAD to read it!

Alma H. Bond, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst and the author of 19 published books, including the series of 'On the Couch' books that examine the lives of the famous and fictional. "FICTIONAL" being the key word. Please pay attention to that. Dr. Alma Bond never treated Marilyn. Monroe had a long experience with psychoanalysis. She was in analysis with Margaret Herz Hohenberg, Anna Freud, Marianne Rie Kris, Ralph S. Greenson (who found Monroe dead), and Milton Wexler. Dr. Bond uses her 37-years of experience as a psychoanalyst, along with extensive research on MM, to create a fictional Manhattan doctor, Dr. Darcy Dale, who MM visits for analysis for a little over a year.


With the author's vast research, and with much publicized information on Monroe, Bond brings us into a world known only to Marilyn and the analysts she trusted with her deepest thoughts and emotions. Marilyn recalls her unhappy childhood, her three failed marriages, and her longing to be loved and belong to someone or have someone belong to her. Marilyn recalls her years in the film industry and her rise to fame. Let me just say that everything we already know about MM is covered in Marilyn Monroe: On the Couch, but Bond does so from a first person account that is vividly imagined. The author uses real quotes from Marilyn Monroe herself to create these fictional sessions with Dr. Dale.

I love Marilyn Monroe. I enjoyed this book immensely and I suspect if you are a Marilyn Monroe fan you will, too.

Let me preface my review with two statements. First, I am not a Shakespearean scholar, but I do know the Scottish play quite well since I studied it in university and taught it at least a dozen times in my 30-year career as an English teacher. My students were often given writing-in-role assignments in which they assumed the identity of a character from the play and described an event from his/her point of view. As a result, I was very keen to read this novel which resembles an extended writing-in-role assignment. Second, this review is based on a digital advance reading copy provided by the publisher so perhaps the problems I have with the book will be corrected before publication.

The first part of the book is the story of Gruoch’s (Lady Macbeth) childhood, young adulthood, and first marriage. This section is interesting in that the author imagines formative events which presumably shaped her personality and so influenced her behaviour as an adult. Her status as “a princess of the Clan Gabhran,” her independent streak which she claims made her “reliant on no man,” and her learning that “if life were to be fair to me, I would have to ensure it by my own actions” all affect her attitude to life in later years. Her sleepwalking and obsession with cleansing her hands of blood are foreshadowed. The author’s imaginative speculations are interesting although I do have some quibbles. Is it likely that Gruoch can remember “vividly” her father’s first words to her when she was “five minutes old”? When she first sees Macbeth, she says “he was not yet fourteen years old” and later she even tells him, “I saw you once when you were only fourteen years old.” Why does she speak with such certainty? Later she learns that he must have been around sixteen. When she learns that Macbeth is married, she says, “Macbeth’s young wife still lives.” How does she know his wife is young?

These objections are minor; my real problems with the book arise in the second half which outlines Gruoch’s life with Macbeth; in essence Part II is Lady Macbeth’s view of the events described in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Several times the sequence of events makes no sense. For example, the plan is to kill Duncan but make it seem like his guards killed him. In the novel, however, Macbeth kills Duncan and the guards at the same time. No one would think the guards are guilty if they are found dead along with their master! When the murder is discovered, Lennox describes the guards as having glazed eyes “with a confused expression in them” and Macbeth says, “I am sorry now that I killed them in my fury.” He kills the guards a second time? They really weren’t dead even though Lady Macbeth had commented on the blood “gushing out of the necks of the dead guards” when she went to plant the daggers on them? And at the time of Duncan’s murder, does it make sense that Lady Macbeth would wake everyone by “leap[ing] up and seiz[ing] the rope to the tower clock and yank[ing] it again and again”? There is a difference between ringing a bell that only Macbeth will hear as a signal and ringing a bell that will alarm everyone.

There are other such illogical descriptions. At one point Gruoch describes a portrait painted of her. She says, “With both arms, I am proudly holding my massive golden crown over my head.” This is a strange pose for a portrait but then it is confused by the artist’s capturing of a gesture “in which one of my hands clutches the other, as if to say I must refrain from trying to wash away Duncan’s blood.” She can’t be clutching the crown and rubbing her hands at the same time.

After the murder, Lady Macbeth sees her husband, “his gaze fixed on his bloody hands, and his fingers began to rub against each other as he tried to wipe off the wet, sticky blood.” Shortly afterwards, she says, “Macbeth turned around and, from behind his back, brought forward two hands, the dripping daggers clasped between them.” Where are the daggers when she first sees his hands?

During the planning of Banquo and Fleance’s murders, there are additional problems. Lady Macbeth identifies Fleance’s mother as Lady Macduff?! Before the banquet in Banquo’s honour, Macbeth speaks about having a “cabinet meeting” that afternoon but then he announces “that his peers should do as they wished until 7 o’clock.” What happened to the meeting? Then when Banquo’s ghost should appear, Macbeth refers to “Duncan’s ghost”?

I could go on and on with these inconsistencies. As already mentioned, I read an advance reading copy so some of these errors will hopefully be corrected, but the number of such errors is unsettling. It is not that the author needs to reproduce Shakespeare’s play, but events should occur logically.

I am also bothered by the anachronisms that make an appearance in the novel. For instance, in a nod to Shakespeare, the author has Macbeth compose a sonnet for his new bride. The problem is that the Macbeths live in the eleventh century, but the sonnet form was not invented until a couple of centuries later. (I am aware that anachronisms appear in Shakespeare’s plays, but wouldn’t a writer try to avoid them?) “Hell is learning the truth too late” is a Biblical quotation? Then there is the diction which often sounds out of place. Terms and phrases such as “dining room” and “sperm” and “calcified” and “hollered” and “bathrooms” and “hoodlums” and “ooh-ing and ah-ing” and “takes a back seat” and “a spoiled brat” and “cabinet meeting” do not ring true to the eleventh century.

The writing style is repetitious. When describing herself, Lady Macbeth says, “I have not been a bad person. I spent a lifetime giving generously to charities, my home always was open for the homeless and the hungry, and I encouraged Macbeth to embark on a holy crusade to Rome, where he scattered money among the poor like seed.” When describing her husband, she uses almost the same words: “He was a good man . . . He was kind to the impoverished, and actually scattered money like seed to the poor when we visited the pope in Rome.”

A didactic tone is occasionally detected. For example, “Bodhe also had arranged for three Kellachs to be pulled by the horses. These were wooden carts with wheels pinned together at the edges . . . ” Is this second sentence really needed? And why the past tense in the definition? At another point she launches into an explanation of churches in Scotland: “There is no single, organized church in Scotland. The churches are regional, reflecting the different religions of the various people who make up Scotland.” Such information might be interesting, but is it something someone would mention in her life story? Then there are statements like, “As was the custom in ancient Scotland, everybody ate from one large pot.” A person living in a particular time is not likely going to refer to that period of time as “ancient.”

For me, this book was disappointing. There were some suggestions as to the formation of Lady Macbeth’s character but insufficient to be convincing and fully explain her actions. Her contradictory references to both her “superior masculinity” and her “innate feminine softness” just confuse the psychological portrait. I’m afraid I would not recommend this book to people looking for a better understanding of this (in)famous literary character.

I'm not entirely sure that I liked this book. The writing style was superb, the story telling was great, but Jackie O came off as narcissistic, money-grubbing, and selfish. I liked Jacki O before reading this book but her personality came off as abrasive and she tended to act as if she was the center-of-the-world without regard to others around her. I found it particularly telling when she mentioned that her sister was jealous of her, but that was ok because Jackie was better off than she was.½

Not my cup of tea. (68)½

A psychoanalytic decent into madness has never been so much fun Locked up in Montdevergues Asylum in 1943, Camille Claudel recalls her life as a combination of both happy memories and horrific nightmares. From the injustice of her lover, Auguste Rodin to the betrayal of her brother Paul of who lived a rich and varied life of fame and fortune that should have belonged to Camille herself. Translated by fictional William Barrett, Professor Emeritus of Classic French Literature, he attempts to transcribe Camile's memoir after viewing one of her exhibits, and remembering a forgotten case of manuscripts and soap carvings that had come his way during World War II, and has been up in his attic ever since. As Rodin's student, and then his mistress, Camille soon learns some harsh lessons of life as their romance slowly changes, and deteriorates with adverse affects. Her needy brother doesn't help either, turning treacherous by taking what is rightfully hers and calling it his own.

The author, Alma H. Bond, puts in novel form her own words about Camille's life using her own psychoanalysis and writing skills to reveal what could have gone on in the fragile mind of talented sculptor Camille. A young and impressionable girl thrown into a man's world where the creativity of a woman would be expected to be dropped at the very mention of marriage, children and homemaking. But not her, not without a fight! Camille: A Novel, is broken into foreword, prologue and three parts - Part one - The Early Years (1864 - 1881), part two - The Rodin Years (1881 - 1912) and part three The Asylum Years (1913-1943) At the back of the book can be found a bibliography,addendum and a glossary of French words that is very useful. We see Camille's search for religion and family history through the author's delightful prose with this fictional account of Camille's life that was an engrossing, and pleasurable read. With an incestuous relationship with her brother and a spiteful jealous sister, it's no wonder Camille struggled with her increasing paranoia. Not to mention the degenerate mental health system back in the Victorian era, very few visits from her family, sedation and an inevitable loss of reality. My heart went out to her. Camille was clearly way ahead of her time and not only grossly mistreated, but misunderstood in many ways. It's an inspiring (albeit it quite sad) biography with a fictional twist, recreated with a mixture of faction and pure indulging fiction.

Camille Claudel was a 19th Century Parisian sculptress best known for her love affair with Auguste Rodin. This book purports to be Camille's memoirs written during her confinement in a mental institution, that were lost and then discovered hidden in an attic after many years.

Camille's family was bi-polar; her mother and younger sister were cold and unloving, while her father and brother were warm and encouraging. This dichotomy didn't stop her from pursuing her art, first by sculpting figures out of mud, and later from clay. As she matures into a young woman, she obtains a place as a student with Alfred Boucher, who later passes her apprenticeship to Rodin. Camille held within her an artistic fire, which burned brightly and expressed itself in her refusal to be dominated by male society. She was born to sculpt and ferociously attacked anyone who attempted to say otherwise, even when in later life it meant nearly starving for lack of a commission.

Throughout her life, Camille dreamed of "her artist," the one who will sweep her off her feet and teach her everything; Rodin becomes this artist for her. She falls deeply in love with him, as he protects and encourages her both as a sculptor and as a lover. Unfortunately, despite ten years with Rodin, he refuses to marry her instead maintaining his common law relationship with another woman. This drives Camille deeper and deeper into despair; she starts suffering from paranoid delusions about Rodin. In her madness, she destroyed many of her own pieces believing them to be in jeopardy of being stolen by "Rodin and his gang." Ultimately she is committed to a mental institution by her mother, where she remains until her death, thirty years later. Her descent into madness, as rendered by Bond, a psychoanalyst, is fascinating, gripping and provides a special insight into the human brain.½