The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe [Paperback]

In November 1960, Frank Sinatra gave Marilyn Monroe a dog. His name was Mafia Honey, or Maf for short. He had an instinct for celebrity. For politics. For psychoanalysis. For literature. For interior decoration. For Liver Treat with a side order of National Biscuits.

Maf was with Marilyn for the last two years of her life, first in New York, where she mixed with everyone who was anyone—the art dealer Leo Castelli, Lee Strasberg and the Actors Studio crowd, Upper West Side émigrés—then back to Los Angeles. She took him to meet President Kennedy and to Hollywood restaurants, department stores, and interviews. To Mexico, for her divorce.

With style, brilliance, and panache, Andrew O’Hagan has drawn a one-of-a-kind portrait of the woman behind the icon, and the dog behind the woman.

O’Hagan’sseductively witty novel, written from the down-low but philosophically lofty vantage point of Mafia Honey, the fluffy white Maltese that was Frank Sinatra’s gift to his gentle, needy friend Marilyn. Maf, a British import, is fiercely political (a Trotskyite), erudite and snootily stylish (caring about home décor, he tells us, is part of my pedigree ). He skewers the Hollywood elite while coming to adore his fated companion whose tenuous dreams he can read distinctly even as they’re turning to dust.
-More Magazine

Andrew O’Hagan’s book—inspired by Marilyn Monroe’s real-life Maltese—isstellar. Whether Maf is buoying his owner’s spirits or coolly assessing Susan Sontag, he has a nose for silliness and deep sadness. Of course, it helps that, as he notes, dogs ‘can hear what people are saying to themselves, and we can sniff illusion.’This December surprise is a very real contender for the wittiest, wisest, most winning book of the year