Peggy

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A dazzling, richly imagined novel about Peggy Guggenheim—a story of art, family, love, and becoming yourself, by the award-winning author of Under the Bridge, soon to be a Hulu limited series starring Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone.

“Godfrey brilliantly resurrects the avant-garde adventurer Peggy Guggenheim as a feminist icon for our times.”—Jenny Offill

Venice, 1958. Peggy Guggenheim, heiress and now legendary art collector, sits in the sun at her white marble palazzo on the Grand Canal. She’s in a reflective mood, thinking back on her thrilling, tragic, nearly impossible journey from her sheltered, old-fashioned family in New York to here, iconoclast and independent woman.

Rebecca Godfrey’s Peggy is a blazingly fresh interpretation of a woman who defies every expectation to become an original. The daughter of two Jewish dynasties, Peggy finds her cloistered life turned upside down at fourteen, when her beloved father goes down with the Titanic. His death prompts Peggy to seek a life of passion and personal freedom, and, above all, to believe in the transformative power of art. We follow Peggy as she makes her way through the glamorous but sexist and antisemitic art worlds of New York and Europe and meet the numerous men who love her (and her money), while underestimating her intellect, talent, and vision.  Throughout, Peggy must balance her loyalty to her family with her need to break free from their narrow, snobbish way of life and the unexpected restrictions that come with vast fortune.

With intellect and style, Rebecca Godfrey, in her final book–completed by her friend, the acclaimed writer Leslie Jamison–brings to life a woman who helped make the Guggenheim name synonymous with art and genius, recasting her as, in the words of novelist Jenny Offill, “a feminist icon for our times.”Rebecca Godfrey (1967-2022) was an award-winning novelist and journalist. Her books include The Torn Skirt, finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the award-winning true crime story Under the Bridge, soon to be released as a Hulu limited series starring Riley Keough as Rebecca Godfrey. Godfrey earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and taught writing at Columbia University. She lived with her husband and daughter in Upstate New York.

Leslie Jamison‘s books include The Empathy Exams, The Recovering, the novel The Gin Closet, and the forthcoming memoir Splinters. She teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn.US

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