SUNDAY BOOKS & CULTURE: Nonfiction
Penny A Parrish reviews Lynn Cullen’s “When We Were Brilliant” a moving historical novel about the friendship between Marilyn Monroe and photojournalist Eve Arnold.
By Penny A Parrish
BOOK REVIEWER
WHEN WE WERE BRILLIANT
by Lynn Cullen
Published by Berkley (January 20, 2026)
Hardcover $24.69
Audiobook $14.99
Reviewed by Penny A Parrish
Reading this book will make you feel like you have slipped into someone’s personal diary. It is narrated by Eve Arnold, who is talking directly to a long dead friend named Norma Jean Baker. We know her better as Marilyn Monroe. The author has taken these women, all three of them, and brought their relationship to life through meticulous research and a powerful dose of feminism.
Eve Arnold was the first female photographer admitted to the international photo enclave “Magnum.” Led by Robert Capa, the famous war photographer and photojournalist, Arnold struggled to find her place. Instead of shoots in studios, using lights and tripods and retouching methods, Eve liked to take photos of people in their natural surroundings. But she kept getting sent to cover “women” topics and famous females from Joan Crawford to Queen Elizabeth II. It’s not the work she wanted. So when a beautiful blonde cornered her in a bathroom at the 21 Club and asked her to take pictures of the REAL Marilyn Monroe, she thought it was going to be just another chapter of the rich and famous. She was wrong.
From 1952 through Monroe’s final film “The Misfits” Eve Arnold took pictures. She followed Marilyn as she worked her way through both movies and husbands, including Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller. She wept with her when the star suffered multiple miscarriages. She neglected her own son and husband to follow this “feral child” and learned about her foster homes, abuse and loneliness. She provided a shoulder to cry on in addition to taking amazing photographs (look them up online).
The book is written in the second person which made it so very personal to me, a flashback as Eve reflects on their two decades together. “You chose me. You had hundreds, probably thousands of men photograph you, all the best ones in the business, true artists…Yet you wanted me. You saved your best for me.”
Arnold went on to cover major events and individuals throughout the world. For 46 years, across six continents, she took pictures. But she is still known as Marilyn Monroe’s photographer. This deeply moving historical novel shows the personal side of two women who supported each other as they fought their way through a world run by men.
Penny A Parrish is a local writer and photographer. View her photos.
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