The American heiress and iconic art collector Peggy Guggenheim comes to life in Rebecca Godfrey's posthumous novel, Peggy. Godfrey, who died in 2022, spent 10 years writing this bold and intimate portrait of Guggenheim (inspired by her "scandalous" autobiography), which Leslie Jamison (The Empathy Exams) finished after Godfrey's death.
Peggy imperiously begins her story with "I am the daughter of two dynasties" and unravels the tapestries of the rigid social hierarchy among the rich and famous of 1912 New York City. Along with her sisters, Benita and Hazel, 14-year-old Peggy is forced to grow up quickly when their wealthy father, Benjamin, goes down with the Titanic in April 1912. The tragedy and triumph of her father's final hours haunts and inspires Peggy in equal degrees to set her own life course, one bursting with a passion for surrealism and the company of bohemians.
Godfrey's prose exquisitely navigates Peggy's inner contradictions, depicting her as a rebellious iconoclast who lives and loves fiercely but also wrestles with insecurity as a Jewish woman. Embroidered with fascinating luminaries from the world of art and literature, including Man Ray, Djuna Barnes, Emma Goldman, and Samuel Beckett, the novel ends with the opening of Peggy's gallery in London 1938. Though readers might wish for more (an epilogue in 1958 breezes over Peggy's heroic actions to save artwork from the Nazis in World War II), Godfrey's last novel is a dazzling and colorful ode to an irresistibly independent spirit. --Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer and copywriter in Denver