For friends of Rebecca Godfrey, the writer’s final novel is more than a posthumous stamp on a career cut short — it’s another piece of her to savour now that she’s gone.
Stephanie Savage was among those with a front-row seat to Godfrey’s tireless work on “Peggy” during what turned out to be the final decade of her life. When it became clear Godfrey wouldn’t be able to finish the book about the heiress Peggy Guggenheim before her death, Godfrey left extensive notes so someone else could.
“‘Peggy’ coming out after she’s gone has been a really beautiful gift to those of us who loved her,” said Savage, whose decades-long friendship with Godfrey began at the University of Toronto’s Innis College.
“There’s a real exuberance and a zest for life and inquisitiveness and a purposefulness in Peggy’s story that is also very much Rebecca’s story of leaning in.”
The book, published by Knopf Canada on Tuesday, tells a fictionalized version of Guggenheim’s whirlwind life story, of falling in love with men and art and the act of living. It charts the first half of her life from her father’s death on the Titanic in 1912 through to the late 1930s as she prepared to open a gallery in London.
When Godfrey died of cancer in 2022 at age 54, her literary agent asked her friend Leslie Jamison to complete her 300-page manuscript using notes Godfrey left behind, including some she dictated to her husband and friends in her final days.
“The process of working on this book was unlike any creative task I’d previously undertaken: a posthumous collaboration with Rebecca that carried out her vision as best I could, completing the tremendous work she’d already done, adding a few of my own words to carry out a conception that was utterly, powerfully hers,” Jamison writes in a note at the end of the book.
When Savage reads “Peggy” now, she said she senses Godfrey on every page.
“Rebecca was also an adventurer, someone who had some mischief in her and was bold and not afraid to do things where there might be some consequence. Being able to read this book that meshes that part of Rebecca with that part of Peggy is really powerful,” said Savage, a screenwriter and TV producer who co-created “The O.C.” and “Gossip Girl.”
Godfrey is perhaps best known for her 2005 non-fiction book “Under the Bridge,” which chronicles the high-profile murder of British Columbia teen Reena Virk, who was beaten by a group of girls in 1997.
That book was turned into a TV miniseries, released earlier this year on Disney Plus. Godfrey served as an executive producer, and is depicted in it as a morally ambiguous opportunist whose character serves to critique the true crime genre.
Godfrey’s first novel, “The Torn Skirt,” published in 2005 tells a similarly dark tale about teenage girls.
When Godfrey first told Savage about her plans for “Peggy,” Savage said she was thrilled her friend would be writing about a joyful subject, a woman who overcame family tragedy to create a life filled with beauty.
“When she was telling me about ‘Peggy,’ all I could think was: this means you’re going to go to Paris, you’re going to go to Venice, you’re going to be in the south of France. You’re going to be researching the Titanic and the suffrage movement and New York society in the early 20th century and be looking at really beautiful art,” Savage said.
“The process of writing the book was going to be full of so much beauty and travel and unearthing of really good things.”
All of that came true, said Savage, who joined Godfrey on a trip to the south of France, where part of the novel takes place.
Though she holds on to those memories — and the new ones she formed with Godfrey’s loved ones as they geared up for the book’s release — there’s also deep sadness that comes with “Peggy’s” publication.
“One of my favourite things in the world was getting a copy of Rebecca’s book when a new novel came out or a new edition. She would write a note in the front. And this is the first time that I have a book that doesn’t have a note,” Savage said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 13, 2024.
