Costalegre: A Novel Inspired By Peggy Guggenheim and Her Daughter - Hardcover

Maum, Courtney

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1947793365 ISBN 13: 9781947793361

Publisher: Tin House Books, 2019

Synopsis

"Delightful ... In Lara, Maum has given a little-considered daughter a more hopeful future." ―Mona Simpson, The New York Times Book Review

“Maum’s slender, intelligent Costalegre is about many things: art as spectacle and art as discipline; life as joke and life as tragedy; the role of unreason in paintings and politics. But most of all, it’s about the youthful desire to be, in Lara’s words, contemplated and considered ― to be, in short, loved." ― The Boston Globe

• One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2019.
• A Best Book of Summer at amNY, Moda Operandi, Publishers Weekly, Southern Living, and Thrillist.
• A Best Book of July at The Washington Post, Hello Giggles, Refinery 29, TIME Magazine, and Mind Body Green.

It is 1937, and Europe is on the brink of war. In the haute-bohemian circles of Austria, Germany, and Paris, Hitler is circulating a most-wanted list of “cultural degenerates”―artists, writers, and thinkers whose work is deemed antithetical to the new regime.  To prevent the destruction of her favorite art (and artists), the impetuous American heiress and modern art collector, Leonora Calaway, begins chartering boats and planes for an elite group of surrealists to Costalegre, a mysterious resort in the Mexican jungle, where she has a home. 

The story of what happens to these artists when they reach their destination is told from the point of view of Lara, Leonora’s neglected 15-year-old daughter, who has been pulled out of school to follow her mother to Mexico. Forced from a young age to cohabit with her mother’s eccentric whims, tortured lovers, and entourage of gold-diggers, Lara suffers from emotional, educational, and geographical instability that a Mexican sojourn with surrealists isn’t going to help. But when she meets the outcast Dadaist sculptor Jack Klinger, a much older man who has already been living in Costalegre for some time, Lara thinks she might have found the love and understanding she so badly craves. 

Sinuous and striking, heartbreaking and strange, Costalegre is heavily inspired by the real-life relationship between the heiress Peggy Guggenheim and her daughter, Pegeen. Acclaimed author Courtney Maum triumphs with this wildly imaginative and curiously touching story of a privileged teenager who has everything a girl could wish for―except for a mother who loves her back. 

About this title

About the Author

Courtney Maum is the author of Touch (a New York Time editor's choice and NPR's Best of 2017), as well as the acclaimed I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You. Her book reviews, essays and articles about the writing life have been widely published in outlets such as The New York Times, O the Oprah Magazine, BuzzFeed, Interview Magazine and Electric Literature.

Review

“A lush chronicle of wealth, art, adventure, loneliness, love, and folly toldby a narrator you won't be able to forget.”
- Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

“This is a fascinating, lively, and exquisitely crafted novel.”
- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“A brilliantly arch and haunting novel of privilege and deprivation.”
- Booklist

“If anything can be taut and lush at once, Maum's novel fits the bill.”
- Washington Post

“This mother-daughter dysfunctional relationship is beautifully explored by Maum (Touch) in a soul-searching, atmospheric novel set in a hot, humid climate as torrid as the affairs of the characters who inhabit it.”
- Library Journal

“An arty, lavish novel, Costalegre examines one of the relationships that is often the most surreal to dissect: the one between mother and daughter.”
- Thrillist

“Maum’s coming-of-age novel among some of Europe’s elite is heartbreaking in its evocation of a teenage girl whose mother collects artists to save but who ignores the daughter struggling not to drown. Maum captures the language and the intense flux of adolescent lability. She does it so well that readers may feel they’ve intruded on something private.”
- the Star-Tribune

“With both humor and criticality, Maum’s coming-of-age novel probes the hypocrisy of the art world, the challenges of being a child of artists, and the dangers of not being loved.”
- Ploughshares

“When young Lara finds herself in Costalegre, living with her mother and a gaggle of 19th century surrealist artists, wonder and mayhem ensues. With this slim novel, Courtney Maum has gifted her readers with a breathtaking meditation on youth, art, and the ever-mysterious bonds between mothers and daughters. Costalegre is a spectacular high-wire act that dazzles and devastates.”
- Laura van den Berg, author of THE THIRD HOTEL

“Courtney Maum's Costalegre is a marvel―so lively, intimate, and strange you don't read so much as dream the voice and visions of Lara, our 15 year old narrator writing from a house full of surrealists in Mexico, as they wait out WWII. This is an unforgettable book, by a writer who proves on these pages that she can do anything.”
- Julie Buntin, author of MARLENA

About this edition

• Publisher: Tin House Books
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1947793365
• ISBN 13: 9781947793361
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240