Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

It is 1937, and Europe is on the brink of war. 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.

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 fifteen-year-old daughter. Forced from a young age to live 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, Lara thinks she might have found the understanding she so badly craves.

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

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

This novel, told from the point of view of 14-year-old Lara Callaway, tells of life among a group of avant-garde artists and thinkers who escaped from the early days of Hitler's Third Reich in 1937. When her mother, Lenora Calaway, moves her art collection and her entourage to Mexico, Lara laments not having a mother who pays attention to her. Loosely depicting the relationship between the heiress turned art collector Peggy Guggenheim and her daughter Pegeen, Maum focuses on the various eccentric personalities of the group, especially her mother's current husband, along with Lara's struggles being cooped up with little to do except paint and write notes, journal entries, and unsent letters to her brother in Germany. The secondary characters are all male, except for Hetty, a writer, whom Lara finds "horrible." Lara sounds mostly like a petulant teenager as she rages against her situation, yet she occasionally analyzes her situation from a mature viewpoint. Having been taken out of school, she longs to study again, if only to relieve her boredom. Narrator Frankie Corzo conveys Lara's youth convincingly. VERDICT This audiobook will appeal to listeners seeking an amusing, sometimes informative glimpse into a unique assemblage of personalities.--Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo

Publishers Weekly Review

Maum's third novel (after Touch) is a rich and delectable tale of art, love, and war. The narrative, which is based on Peggy Guggenheim and her set, is enlivened by 14-year-old narrator Lara, who elevates the book from juicy gossip to a beautiful meditation. The year is 1937 and Leonora Calaway, a wealthy art collector, has gathered up the artists "the Führer decided were the most degenerate in Europe" and sailed to Costalegre in Mexico, where Surrealists and Dadaists, writers and painters, all live together to wait out the coming war. Her neglected daughter, Lara, always a tag-along on her mother's globe-hopping adventures and the only child to be found in Costalegre, writes in her diary that she's "burning up inside to have someone just for me." As the Mexican heat and the lack of news take their toll, a new figure, Dadaist sculptor Jack Klinger, arrives, charming everyone, especially Lara, who feels, like the artists, drawn to him. The highlight is Lara, whose searching intelligence and insightful observations anchor the story. This is a fascinating, lively, and exquisitely crafted novel. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Lara is a captive of her mother's zeal to save artists and their works condemned by the Nazis. It's 1937, and willful heiress Leonora Calaway has brought a group of surrealists to a Mexican jungle resort. Lonely, worried, and funny 15-year-old Lara fills her diary with preternaturally keen observations of the adults' competitive combativeness and nature's glory and perils. Ever-inventive Maum follows the New York hipness of Touch (2017) with a dreamlike fable about a would-be idyll poisoned by ego, war, and the guilt of the rescued. Leonora is based on art collector Peggy Guggenheim, Lara on Guggenheim's daughter, Pegeen, and discerning the real-life inspirations for the artists is part of this evocative tale's allure. But its depth is found in how astutely Maum tracks her diarist-narrator's intellectual and emotional coming-of-age through her evolving eloquence and sharpening perceptions. Wounded by her mother's inattention, infatuated with a sculptor, burdened by her femaleness, and increasingly serious about making art, Lara is extraordinarily poignant. By internalizing and then transcending her sources, Maum has created a brilliantly arch and haunting novel of privilege and deprivation.--Donna Seaman Copyright 2019 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

A young girl follows her mother and a wayward group of artists into the Mexican jungle on the eve of World War II in this spare, enchanting novel.Fourteen-year-old Lara Calaway just wants her mother to notice her. Instead, Leonora, a wealthy New York socialite, is more interested in collecting members of the avant-garde. There's Konrad, a traumatized painter, whom Leonora marries; C., Konrad's longtime lover, a forceful and dedicated writer with hair that "floats around her face like an evil halo"; and the loathed Hetty, "the only other woman with us in Mexico[who] is just horrible." Maum (Touch, 2017, etc.) depicts Lara's curiosity and longing in exquisite, diary-style vignettes, sketches, notes, and unsent letters. "He'd be so beautiful if he were happy," she muses about Konrad, her new stepfather. "Sometimes at the parties when I catch the way he is with C., I hate my mother for the way she has to have the things that everybody likes." According to Maum, Leonora and Lara Calaway are based loosely on Peggy Guggenheim and her daughter Pegeen while the artists who make up "the entire bin of loons" at Costalegre are composites of surrealists like Andr Breton, Leonora Carrington, and Djuna Barnes. Lara makes for a fine narratoryoung enough to be both enchanted and annoyed by the strange collection of adults that surround her and old enough to explain her frustrations with heartbreaking clarity. Only occasionally does Maum allow her teenager to really sound like a teenager, and then it's played for laughs. "If she ends up putting her museum here," Lara writes of Costalegre and her mother, "I am going to die." Occasional theatrics aside, Lara blooms when she encounters a Dadaist sculptor from Germany, moved by his work and his ability to really see her, "you know, in that way that feels like something has been thrown directly toward you, as if you're on the other end of a straight line." The novel closes as quickly as it opens, in a moment of teenage confusion, rage, and hope.A lush chronicle of wealth, art, adventure, loneliness, love, and folly told by a narrator you won't be able to forget. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.