PEGGY | Kirkus Reviews

Rich, restless, driven by “grand dreams” and fears of a family curse, Peggy Guggenheim sets out to find the bohemian life for which she yearns.

Godfrey worked on this book for 10 years before dying of cancer in 2022; using the manuscript and notes she left behind, Jamison finished the book, immersing the reader in Godfrey’s vision of the intense and willful Guggenheim as she progresses from adolescence to womanhood: “I wanted a future of gangsters or poets; I wanted violence and beauty…” At 14, after her father—traveling with his mistress—dies on board the Titanic, Peggy, her mother, and two sisters must downsize, but they are still wealthy members of New York society, living under Mrs. Guggenheim’s expectations of conformity. Peggy, meanwhile, even in her teens is testing the limits of her position, deceiving her mother about what she’s studying in school, flirting with both sexes, questing constantly “for another kind of life…A life among artists.” A job in an avant-garde bookshop introduces her to some of those creative people, including Laurence Vail, a sculptor known as the King of Bohemia. Moving to Paris, marrying Vail, and having two children with him, Guggenheim begins to claim her chosen identity. More appealing in its earlier, questing, formative half, the novel turns more glamorous and sensational in its later chapters. Guggenheim’s friends and many lovers come to the fore, while famous names pervade the text—Man Ray, Hart Crane, Emma Goldman, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett (one of those lovers). Issues of class, antisemitism, modernism, sexuality, women’s rights, and politics are discussed, and there’s plenty of drama. Peggy’s marriage turns abusive; her older sister dies in childbirth, and her younger is accused of killing her two sons after they fall to their deaths. The story concludes as Peggy reaches 40, but a coda set in Venice 20 years later crams in the art purchases for which she is mainly remembered. It’s a devoted, creative version of the life, often in romantic thrall to the mercurial, impulsive, insulated figure at its center.

A vivid, indulgent imagining of the legendary collector.