BOOK REVIEW

A Model Summer by Paulina Porizkova

(Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com)  It's 1980, and 15 year-old Jirina arrives in Paris to become a model. It is a summer that will change her life. 

Mere days ago, she lived a dreary life in Sweden:  the neglected older daughter of divorced (and still unhappy) parents.  Mom resents Jirina for being born and derailing Mom's singing career. Dad is a pretentious intellectual who loves no one but himself. Jirina's schoolmates despise her because her family emigrated from communist Czechoslovakia:  to them, Jirina is a weird foreigner.

Now she's flying in to Paris with Britta, a pretty Swedish girl. They are new hires at Sirens, a top modeling agency in Paris.  Lucky for them they won't have to worry about finding a place to stay. The agency owner Jean-Pierre lets them share a room in his house under the watchful eye of his wife Marina.

A former model, Marina is now a slovenly wreck who drifts around the house, smoking countless cigarettes.  She ignores her baby daughter Olympe. Obviously she is one more woman who lost her career to unwilling motherhood, and is now drowning in resentment.  Britta thinks Marina is a cow.  Jirina, on the other hand, staves off her own feelings of insecurity by caring for little Olympe who reminds her of her much-missed younger sister.

But the exciting world of modeling beckons.  Soon Jirina and Britta start a grueling process known as the "go-and-see." This is where a beginning model has appointments to show up at photo-shoots to see if she can get work.

So each poor kid has to scramble through the streets of Paris only to arrive at crappy little rooms staffed by jaded and unfriendly fashion-photographers.  She has to surrender her model's portfolio of the one or two photographs of herself she's managed to have done.  Sometimes she is asked to undress and be scrutinized. Through it all, she has to put up with snotty comments and people talking about her in the most critical and personal of tones as if she isn't even present. All this is tough on a kid's self-image.

Jirina has no time to worry about this, however, because Marina and Jean-Pierre throw a party. She gets to meet the slinky Evalinda, currently at the top of the modeling profession.  Evalinda adopts Jirina as a pet and sweeps her along to still more parties! Cocaine is just starting to make the international jet-setting scene, and no one knows or cares that Jirina is underage.

However, Jirina is level-headed and resourceful. She has a deep love of books, culture, and history that counterbalance her insecurity and tendency to be overawed by the more established models.  Plus, she sees most things exactly as they are. In earlier scenes, her honesty is overlaid with a touching innocence that is sometimes very funny.  Later on, after unfortunate encounters with the tawdry and destructive side of modeling, she picks up a believable veneer of cynicism and self-disgust.

Her adventure is just beginning. Soon her career will lead her to Morocco, introduce her to a sexy Australian photographer, provide her with a sympathetic gay friend, and pull her deeper under the influence of the unsavory Evalinda (who must have been fun to write about).

I found this an interesting book.  I remember author Paulina Porizkova's supermodel days back in the 1980s, and I'll admit I was curious.  Yes, she can write well.  The ending seemed a little off for me as if the book terminated too soon.  Jirina still has a decision to make, and I don't think she fully faced it.

The strengths of the novel are Jirina's likable character, the surprising amount of humor, and the wealth of details about the modeling profession. This is the real deal. I tend to feel ripped off when I read a book about someone from a specific profession that skimps on the details of that profession (the much-hyped Veronica, for example, about a former supermodel also in Paris in the 1980s). I didn't feel ripped off reading A Model Summer.

A Model Summer reads like a memoir.  The countless insider details of the modeling industry are all here. You have the tungsten lights that are so bright that they burn the model's eyeballs a temporary blistering red. You have the snippy assistants at the hotel dining room table griping about the model's pubic hair right in front of her.  You have the slimy client who wants oral sex before he will give the model a job.  You find yourself immersed inside a little-known profession during the strange time and place that was Paris in the early 1980s. Like Jirina's character: total honesty.

Read an excerpt from Almost 5'4": Confessions of an Unconventional Model by Isobella Jade Buy A Model Summer at Amazon.com through this link:   A Model Summer

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