Have you ever read a book and desperately wished it was something it wasn’t? Or that it would turn out differently? The entire time I was reading Time with Norma Jeane: A Time Travel Novel by Elyse Douglas, I did just that. I kept hoping that the time travel would be a symptom of a mental illness and that everything that happened was in the main character’s head. Without giving everything away, it wasn’t.
In Time with Norma Jeane, Darla Gallagher is living an unhappy life. Her mother has passed away and her father is an alcoholic who argues most of the time with a new wife. Darla and her stepmother don’t get along which makes daily life difficult. To escape, Darla buries herself in old movies from the 1940s and 50s. She feels an especial love for Marilyn Monroe who was her mother’s favorite actress and buries herself in Marilyn movies, magazines, and books.
On her 16th birthday, after hearing an argument between her father and stepmother, Darla takes her dog, Sonny, on a walk through the winter woods around their home. The air is cold and it is snowing, but it revives her. For a time, she feels free of the strain of her difficult homelife. She thinks about her mother and about herself and Marilyn Monroe. They’re all tied up together for Darla. But then she finds a path. It is not one she’s seen before and before she can document it with her camera that she’s brought along on the walk, Sonny sees something in the distance and bolts down the newly discovered path. Darla follows, finding herself in unknown territory. It’s on the path that she finds herself facing down a blue bolt of electricity as it shoots down the path. It encompasses her and when she comes to her senses, she finds Sonny and a stranger.
The strange man announces that she appeared out of nowhere and demands to know where she came from. The man is young and Darla thinks he’s attractive but he asks uncomfortable questions. He insists that she talks weird and that there’s no way she lives nearby. When he tells Darla that the date is December 18th, 1954, she thinks either he’s nuts or she has fallen and hit her head.
After a confusing conversation with him, she flees, wanting to get home. But her home is nowhere to be found. Even more confused, she tumbles down an embankment, twisting her ankle and landing on a road. A car slams its brakes right in front of her and the driver hurries out to help Darla. To Darla’s surprise, the driver is Marilyn Monroe, live and in person. At the sight of her, Darla begins to accept that it really is 1954. Marilyn insists on taking Darla home and caring for her. Because Darla is so obsessed with Marilyn, she allows it and begins an adventure she never dreamed possible.
Time With Norma Jeane is at times compelling and frustrating. Darla’s scenes with her father are sweet and sad, with realistic dialogue. Her scenes with Eddie, the stranger in the woods, though, are clumsy with confusing character objectives. Does he like her or is he suspicious of her? Does she think he’s creepy or attractive? Based on the scenes these two characters share though, I never figured it out. Aside from being a love interest, Eddie has no purpose in the story and does nothing to advance the plot except give Darla the date.
As the main character, Darla is a perplexing heroine. She acts as Marilyn’s crutch, soothing her ego and making her feel useful. In return, Marilyn teaches her how to wear makeup and takes her shopping, things that in a perfect world, Darla would be doing with her own mother. The connection Darla has made between Marilyn Monroe and her mother enforce Darla’s desire to stay with Marilyn. It is that connection that guides Darla in taking on Marilyn’s objectives instead of focusing on her own. As much as Marilyn looms over the story, it is Darla that leads us and is ultimately the reason to see it through.
Douglas’ take on Marilyn is more interesting. She is shown as both strong and fragile, confident and insecure. She becomes Marilyn, simply with a look or removing her sunglasses, when it is necessary and using it as a shield or as a means to an end. Her interactions with everyday people vary depending on the situation. Douglas’ Marilyn Monroe is like a costume that Norma Jeane slips on and off at will. It is when she is just plain Norma Jeane that she is most interesting. She describes her childhood and her mother with a sadness that is palpable. Her yearning for the father she never knew is heartbreaking. It is when she talks about her career that the differences between Norma Jeane and Marilyn become glaringly obvious. The dialogue becomes stilted and reads like an IMDB page. It is shallow and meaningless and she knows it.
While the main plot is fairly straightforward, there are some plot points that are unnecessary. They meet a hitchhiking singer who isn’t famous…yet. It’s a cutesy moment when there didn’t need to be one. Joe DiMaggio shows up to bluster for a chapter during one of Marilyn’s weaker moments. Even Eddie shows up again later in the book for a quick romantic interlude. None of those scenes add anything to the story. It is the conversations with Marilyn and Darla’s need to keep her idol safe that bring the story to life. It is the intimate moments that made me wish the book was something more than it ultimately ended up being. Overall, Time with Norma Jeane has moments of emotional impact but not enough to sustain the reader through the whole story. The author employs too many recitations of Marilyn’s life story that sound like a Wikipedia page instead of letting her history be told organically. The dialogue can be clunky and awkward making connections to the characters harder than need be. Still, there is something there in the quieter conversations between Norma Jeane and Darla that gives you an insight into the fragile minds of a legend and a teenage girl.
Maura Goode
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I have bought the book and finished the first ten chapters. So far it is a satisfying time travel story that I felt provided a great behind the scenes look at Marilyn Monroe and her life. I do admit some dialogue felt a bit forced and pointless and some of the plot decisions are a bit weird but it has overall been a fun read so far.