Book Review: “Peggy” by Rebecca Godfrey with Leslie Jamison
Peg, It Will Come Back to You
The novel Peggy is a collaboration between two writers. Rebecca Godfrey wrote more than two-thirds of the book before dying of cancer in 2022. Leslie Jamison completed it, and the publisher did not just publish it as-is posthumously at the original author’s death. Godfrey had already invested 10 years of her life working on the project and wanted to see it completed correctly. And so, we have this book. It’s the fictional biography of art collector Peggy Guggenheim. However, those hoping to glimpse the early 20th-century art world will be disappointed. Instead, Peggy is more about Guggenheim’s inner life. For that, the book is already being lauded: Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review, and, in Canada, Heather Reisman — the CEO of Canada’s largest book chain, Indigo Books and Music — promoted the work in an e-mail blast. Even noted author Gary Shteyngart has championed the work in a blurb. Thus, Peggy is finding its audience amongst intellectuals and the glitterati.
What could be said about Peggy? Well, it’s the story of a Guggenheim from when she was a young girl — her father died on the Titanic when she was 14 — following her as she finds love from both sexes living in New York City. The novel then joins her overseas to Paris, where she lives with a brut for a husband and poses for photographs by Man Ray. The novel’s arc follows the woman from the death of her older sister to the deaths of the children belonging to her younger sister to approximately the beginning of World War II — with a brief coda set in Venice some 20 years later. As noted, there’s not a lot in her here about the work that the book’s subject became famous for, though much hay is made about the lives of the bohemians that she befriends and beds, and that includes (I didn’t know this) Samuel Beckett. If anything, Peggy will have you wanting to read more classic fiction or go to an art museum for all the pieces of artwork and novels that get named here. It’s also a searing look at the lives of flappers in the 1920s.
Peggy is a richly poetic work that reads as though it were written by a singular voice. However, it has its quirks. The novel sometimes did and sometimes didn’t include quotation marks around people’s speech. That said, I found Peggy interesting, as it is a novel primarily about relationships, particularly with men and between sisters and mothers. Guggenheim is looking for something of a father figure to fill the void left by her dad’s death, and her relationship with her mother is usually frosty as the elder is more of the old-monied world. (At the same time, the younger offspring plays the role of the spoiled heiress.) And that brings me to my one criticism of the book. As she’s presented here, I found Peggy Guggenheim to be shrill sometimes. I can understand the appeal of reading about the lives of the rich and famous to see how the other half live. Still, I also found that my sympathizes for the erstwhile “brat,” if I could call her that (though you can’t libel the dead), to be limited.
Still, Peggy is well written, and it would be hard to discern that it was written by two people if you didn’t know better. It was a labor of love for at least one of its writers, having spent the better part of a decade wrestling with the text. However, at the risk of floggin a dead horse, those looking for a blow-by-blow account of Guggenheim’s life events will also be bitter at this roman à clef that uses real names. In a sense, Peggy is a rarity: it reveals the hidden world of a noted figure. It does so fictitiously — leaving the author of this work to imagine what lurked behind the gaps in the lives of its subjects. To that end, Peggy is a fabulous novel. While it wasn’t entirely to my tastes — I felt the work didn’t pick up speed until it crossed the ocean and ended up being an account of a troubled relationship between husband and wife — I’m sure those of the upper crust will enjoy this just fine. Peggy is a work of grace, a work of art, a work about endless play and hedonism. I’m sure it’ll find its audience as, in a way, it already has. This is a worthwhile portrait for those interested in learning about Peggy Guggenheim’s life, but not what she’s most noted for.
Rebecca Godfrey with Leslie Jamison’s Peggy will be published by Random House on August 13, 2024.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
