A Model Summer

Paulina Porizkova began her modeling career as a teen in the 1980s, and she uses her experience to illuminate the industry in this quasi-memoir of a novel. The protagonist, Jirina, is just fifteen when she is "discovered" and is sent to Paris for a summer of high fashion modeling. Though she is so young, she is treated as an adult--she discovers the underbelly of modeling, with its drugs, sex as a bargaining chip and eating disorders. Because Jirina is also the narrator, the reader is reassured with her smart assessment of situations and her ability to get by--the reader can get wrapped up in the delicious gossip-y nature of it all without having to worry that this teen is in over her head.