Memoir as Fiction, Fiction as Memoir: Penelope Tree on her debut novel, Piece of my Heart . . .
The old adage, “If you can remember the Sixties you weren’t there” may well be a key reason why I chose to write a coming of age novel rather than a memoir about my experience of growing up in that much hyped era. While it’s undoubtably true that my memory is a bit iffy in some areas, I tend to remember precisely what I was feeling at any given time rather than specific factual incidents. I also wanted my characters to dialogue with one another which would have been impossible in a memoir.
But I had other motives for choosing to write auto fiction over autobiography. I thought it might be more of an adventure, as well as an opportunity to transform my chaotic memories into a story with a resolution. Because real life is so messy, at least mine has been. As I grew older, every time I looked back at my youth, all I could see were my bad choices. The wonderful opportunities I’d been given early on had ended in spectacular failure and I felt lingering shame for having blown it in such a public way.
I grew up in privileged but unusual circumstances. Though my parents stayed married in name, they lived mostly separate lives, and pursued different interests; my father in Barbados, and my mother in New York City. I was brought up by a loving but terminally vague cockney nanny, attended primary school in New York, and boarding school in New England where I ate a lot of ice cream and majored in depression.
One thing my parents had in common was a well-connected social life, and in my early teens, I met Truman Capote at a lunch my mother gave for their mutual friend Babe Paley. As a lonely child with much older siblings, I became an avid reader and had already read many of Capote’s novels and short stories by the time we met. Consequently, when I shyly told him I loved his work and wanted to be a writer, he was very kind and encouraging. Three years later, to my surprise and delight, I was invited to his Black and White Ball along with my parents and half-sister Frankie. That night I was spotted by the photographer Richard Avedon and thanks to him as well as Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland, my modelling career soon kicked off. At last I felt seen, as a graceful thin person, though I kept a pernicious eating disorder secret from everyone.
The following summer, I met the photographer David Bailey in London and fell hopelessly in love with him. Within nine months we were living together in Primrose Hill. He was 29, twice married with a string of glamorous girlfriends to boot. I was 17 and a virgin when we met. What could possibly go wrong? Everyone from my parents to Richard Avedon had pleaded with me to stay at university in New York but I refused to listen. How dare they try to interfere with one of the greatest love stories of all time, as I saw it? And I was at the top of my game as a model, so I thought I could afford to pull some punches.
My new life was certainly exciting. We were constantly shooting features for Vogue and other fashion magazines in exotic places like Kashmir, Nepal, Turkey, and Zambia. On account of his work, Bailey knew all the stars in the sixties firmament -everyone from the Beatles and the Stones, to the Kray twins, Michael Caine, Raquel Welch, Marianne Faithfull. Fellini, Antonioni and Visconti – so our social life was fun and broadly intergalactic.
However, Bailey never hesitated to speak his mind, no matter who was present. When riled, he had an instinct for the jugular; he could be cruel. And his magnetic force-field did not go unnoticed by other women either. They threw themselves at him, often right in front of me, and he responded in kind, unable to resist the whiff of a feral female pheromone. I was tortured by insecurity and jealousy. Meanwhile, he forbade me to work with any other photographers, and he generally loathed my friends, so slowly I became very isolated within Bailey’s world.
It didn’t occur to me to leave, or perhaps my pride wouldn’t allow it. His personality was so powerful and mine so unformed I couldn’t conceive of life without him. But my anger and unhappiness had to go somewhere, and eventually my skin erupted in a stubborn and ferocious display of cystic acne, leaving deep scars in my cheeks. My modelling career ended abruptly, and not long afterwards so did my relationship with Bailey. It took some time before I found the strength to reclaim my centre of gravity and move on, but like old war wounds, the flashbacks from that time still bothered me periodically.
I wrote my novel, Piece of My Heart, in order to recreate the atmosphere of the sixties in London and place the characters in their proper context. My protagonist Ari meets many of the same challenges I did as a teenager, but she ends up handling them differently in the end.
If I had written a memoir, I wouldn’t have had the freedom to build composite characters or play around with the time frame of the story. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to explore what it was like to grow up in England rather than New York. And in the process of writing, I developed compassion for the characters in the narrative, including my younger self who had been forced to learn humility the hard way.
Blending fact and fiction together transformed my view of the past, thanks in great part to the healing power of the imagination.
(c) Penelope Tree
About Piece of my Heart by Penelope Tree:
Set in the beating heart of the 1960s fashion scene, Piece Of My Heart is the brilliant new novel by the supermodel who lived through it all, Penelope Tree.
Fame. Money. Beauty. Sex. Love. Ari wants them all. But at what cost?
Trapped between the suffocation of English boarding school and a chaotic home-life dominated by her eccentric, aristocratic mother, Ari longs for a different kind of life – one lived in the glamour of Swinging ’60s London, with its pop stars and fashion icons. When she is discovered at sixteen by star photographer Bill Ramsey, she gets her chance.
Suddenly, Ari’s life is transformed into a dizzying whirlwind of drugs, photoshoots, and parties, all with Ramsey by her side. The couple are the darlings of the media. But in the fickle world of fashion nothing lasts forever, and Ari’s addiction, her eating disorder, and her increasingly dysfunctional relationship with Ramsey send her life spinning out of control.
A Vogue cover shoot in Nepal offers Ari a make-or-break chance – not just to revive her ailing career, but to win back Ramsey’s love. And yet, in the captivating surroundings Ari finds herself wondering how much more of herself she must lose to keep the things she always thought she wanted.
Order your copy online here.
