A review by abookishtype
Costalegre: A Novel Inspired by Peggy Guggenheim and Her Daughter by Courtney Maum

3.0

The author’s note at the end of Courtney Maum’s Costalegre shares the inspiration for the novel. Though the details and many of the names have been altered for this book, the kernel of the story is the life of Peggy Guggenheim. In the late 1930s and during World War II, Guggenheim helped artists to escape from Europe and get set up in America. She bought thousands of dollars worth of art—especially art deemed as “degenerate” by the Third Reich. Costalegre doesn’t tell the story of the woman based on Guggenheim; rather the woman’s fifteen year-old daughter takes up the reins as narrator to show us what life is like living with a group of people who are all competing to create genuine Surrealist art...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration.