The Real Mother of Marilyn Monroe Armando Nascimento Rosa Trans. Susannah Finzi

Gladys Baker is acerbic, manipulative, witty – and demented. Her daughter Norma Jeane, the most famous woman in America, is fragile, desperately needy and harbouring impossible dreams. Their encounter is painfully raw but also humorous – of lives touched by the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Clark Gable, Arthur Miller, John F Kennedy – personalities we know through a thousand black and white images and the distorting prism of celebrity and of legend.