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Peggy: A Novel Audiobook
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A dazzling, richly imagined novel about Peggy Guggenheim—a story of art, family, love, and becoming oneself—by the award-winning author of Under the Bridge, now 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, author of Dept. of Speculation
“Magnificent . . . Readers will be won over by Godfrey’s incandescent portrait of a singular woman.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
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 perishes on 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 anti-Semitic 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. Along the way, Peggy must balance her loyalty to her family with her need to break free from their narrow, snobbish ways and the unexpected restrictions that come with vast fortune.
Rebecca Godfrey’s final book—completed by her friend, the acclaimed writer Leslie Jamison, following Godfrey’s death in 2022—brings to life the woman who helped make the Guggenheim name synonymous with art and genius.
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"Godfrey focuses on Peggy’s coming into her full powers in this deeply empathic fictionalization of Peggy Guggenheim’s extraordinary life, a lush novel infused with torment, determination, and wit. With keenly drawn characters based on real-life figures and a vivid and illuminating historical context, this bravura projection of Peggy’s spirit and dramatization of her adventures, seamlessly completed by Leslie Jamison after Godfrey’s death, is enthralling, revealing, and resonant."
— Booklist
Quotes
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A smart, exciting, and big-hearted book that not only thinks about what a life can be but also how it becomes legendary.
— Town and Country -
Empathetic . . . Peggy follows the titular late heiress from the ages of 14 to 60 as she discovers her love of fine art, finds her place in a sexist and anti-Semitic world, and makes a name for herself.
— Time -
A tremendous work of the imagination. Peggy Guggenheim embodied the 20th Century, but attempts to capture her vitality and uniqueness have tended to fall flat. No more! Rebecca Godfrey's prose is as stylish as her protagonist and every bit as deep, sensuous and thoughtful. An unparalleled life presented as a page-turner.
— Gary Shteyngart -
A beautifully imagined and superbly written novel about the tenuous line between life and art. Godfrey brilliantly resurrects the avant-garde adventurer Peggy Guggenheim as a feminist icon for our times.
— Jenny Offill -
A tremendous work of the imagination . . . Peggy Guggenheim embodied the twentieth century, but attempts to capture her vitality and uniqueness have tended to fall flat. No more! Rebecca Godfrey’s prose is as stylish as her protagonist and every bit as deep, sensuous, and thoughtful. . . . An unparalleled life presented as a page-turner.
— Gary Shteyngart -
Peggy had often been misunderstood and disrespected, seen as a slutty dilettante who threw her money around. But Rebecca [Godfrey] took Peggy seriously, as a woman full of wit, savvy, and passion, hungry for experience and purpose and with an eye for art, and for people, that others couldn’t yet appreciate.
— Leslie Jamison, in The New Yorker -
Peggy had often been misunderstood and disrespected, seen as a slutty dilettante who threw her money around. But Rebecca [Godfrey] took Peggy seriously, as a woman full of wit, savvy, and passion, hungry for experience and purpose and with an eye for art, and for people, that others couldn’t yet appreciate.
— Leslie Jamison, The New Yorker -
Magnificent . . . In lively first-person narration, Godfrey captures Peggy’s constant wavering between boldness and self-doubt, between the pull of conventional motherhood and the longing to be free. . . . Readers will be won over by Godfrey’s incandescent portrait of a singular woman.
— Publishers Weekly -
Magnificent . . . In lively first-person narration, Godfrey captures Peggy’s constant wavering between boldness and self-doubt, between the pull of conventional motherhood and the longing to be free. . . . Readers will be won over by Godfrey’s incandescent portrait of a singular woman.
— Publishers Weekly, starred review -
A story about the daughter and heiress to the Guggenheim fortune and her artistic and romantic exploits, and her quest to find her own direction and vision despite the pull and sway of her family name. Pick it up for the high society family dramas, for the coming-of-age antics, for the preening and prestigious art world depictions, or for the beauty of the writing itself, the two minds that came together to produce this work of exploration, intrigue, and self-discovery.
— Lit Hub -
A story about the daughter and heiress to the Guggenheim fortune and her artistic and romantic exploits, and her quest to find her own direction and vision despite the pull and sway of her family name. Pick it up for the high society family dramas, for the coming-of-age antics, for the preening and prestigious art world depictions, or for the beauty of the writing itself, the two minds that came together to produce this work of exploration, intrigue, and self-discovery.
— Literary Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2024 -
Magnificent . . . In lively first-person narration, Godfrey captures Peggy’s constant wavering between boldness and self-doubt, between the pull of conventional motherhood and the longing to be free. . . . Readers will be won over by Godfrey’s incandescent portrait of a singular woman.
— Publishers Weekly, starred review -
Godfrey focuses on Peggy’s coming into her full powers in this deeply empathic fictionalization of Peggy Guggenheim’s extraordinary life, a lush novel infused with torment, determination, and wit. With keenly drawn characters based on real-life figures and a vivid and illuminating historical context, this bravura projection of Peggy’s spirit and dramatization of her adventures, seamlessly completed by Leslie Jamison after Godfrey's death, is enthralling, revealing, and resonant.
— Booklist -
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.
— Kirkus Reviews -
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.
— Kirkus Reviews -
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.
— Kirkus Reviews -
The novel follows Guggenheim’s whirlwind life through the art worlds of America and Europe, and the interesting, high-brow, and often sexist circles she traveled in. Godfrey, whose 2005 true crime book Under the Bridge was adapted into a Hulu series starring Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone this year, had a knack for mining real-life details for fictional gold.
— W Magazine -
A beautifully imagined and superbly written novel about the tenuous line between life and art. Godfrey brilliantly resurrects the avant-garde adventurer Peggy Guggenheim as a feminist icon for our times.
— Jenny Offill -
A lush novel infused with torment, determination, and wit. With keenly drawn characters based on real-life figures and a vivid and illuminating historical context, Peggy . . . is enthralling, revealing, and resonant.
— Booklist -
A smart, exciting, and big-hearted book that not only thinks about what a life can be but also how it becomes legendary.
— Town & Country -
The novel follows Guggenheim’s whirlwind life through the art worlds of America and Europe, and the interesting, high-brow, and often sexist circles she traveled in. Godfrey, whose 2005 true crime book Under the Bridge was adapted into a Hulu series starring Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone this year, had a knack for mining real-life details for fictional gold.
— W magazine
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About Rebecca Godfrey
Rebecca Godfrey (1967-2022) was a Canadian novelist and journalist. Her first novel, The Torn Skirt, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Her second book, Under the Bridge, an investigation into the Reena Virk case, was a Globe and Mail Book of the Year and also received the B.C. Award for Canadian Nonfiction and the Arthur Ellis Award for Nonfiction.
About the Narrators
Rebecca Lowman is an actress and audiobook narrator who has won numerous Earphones Awards. She has starred in numerous television shows, including Law & Order, Big Love, NCIS, and Grey’s Anatomy, among many others. She earned her MFA from Columbia University.
Leslie Jamison is the author of several New York Times bestsellers, including Make It Burn, a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award, and the novel The Gin Closet, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and her work has appeared in publications including The Atlantic, Harper’s, and the New York Times Book Review, among many others. She teaches at Columbia University.