Book Review

A model summer by Paulina Porizkova is a fascinating fiction book. This book gave me a wider knowledge of what a modeling career is. Because of the detailed way Porizokova told her story and the word choice she used she was able of making me feel sad, happy and excited as I went through it. A Model Summer can be enjoyable for young girls but also for older women.

Paulina Porizkova is a Czech former political refugee, a model and also an actress. Her book is reliable because she based it on her personal experiences. Porizkova seemed to like and enjoyed her career as a model, according to the book. Perhaps Porizkova once declared "I hate modeling, i still think models are dumb and brainless"
This book is very small; it was written in first person point of view and is divided into twenty six chapters. Each chapter describes the main character’s feelings, and experiences of her time spent in France, the troubles she got into and how she fought to become a real model. Chapters made the story easy to comprehend even in the hardest situations, which are difficult to explain without taking a lot of pages. In the exposition Jirina Radovanovicova is introduced as a tall and plain girl of fifteen years old, who thinks of herself as ugly, when she is about to take a flight to France, where her modeling career is supposed to start. The rising action of Jirina being chosen to go modeling during summer vacation to Paris, a place where she has never been that also inspires her feeling of being fooled and the target of a joke. The story takes place in Paris; a beautiful, big and dangerous city, where Jirina gets hired by a models agency to start with her dreamed life. At the agency Jirina is described as beautiful, perfect and the next modeling star. Jirina loves being in Paris, even when she doesn’t have any friends or family. “What I wouldn’t give to accomplish my dreams”. At first Jirina gets involved in many problems, she has no money; her mother doesn’t care about her, and starts combining drugs, sex and alcohol. After some time, Jirina becomes the model everyone thought she would be. Just then Jirina discovers she’s pregnant and has to make the most important decision: stay in Paris to follow her dream or retire and have her baby, which probably won’t have a father. "So far, if I want my baby, it means going back home or finding a rich man real soon-one who will marry a fifteen-year-old. That's gonna happen."

The purpose of this book was accomplished. Its was to entertain, but also to explain in a detailed way what being a model implies. She wanted to make people realize how hard this career can be, she explained all the challenges and sacrifices, and how a lot of models loose their innocence while they are fighting to succeed as models. The idea behind this book can be common between books about fashion modeling, but what makes this book special is the way its author showed all about this career; she did that in a way that only someone who've experienced that could do it.

A Model Summer is rated as 4stars. It has reviews from many important magazines, newspapers companies and the fashion industry.
"A gripping read..." -Vogue. "A dizzyingly detailed and wrenching tale of innocence lost" -Entertainment Weekly. "Successfully illustrates how seamy and filthy the world of modeling is, specially for young girls who leave home for their big breaks" -New York Times. "An Ex-Models Who Can Write. Ever get annoyed when models talk about how ugly they were as teens? Then read Paulina Porizkova's A Model Summer, and actually convincing novel about a gawky teen becoming a glamazon" -Glamour.

This book showed exactly what i wanted to know. It gave details about the sacrifices and challenges the modeling career brings, it showed that models are not treated like stars by the agencies, and how dangerous this career can become if models are not smart enough. A Model Summer showed information that i wasn't able to get on the Internet nor books or magazines. I loved this book, because it provided interesting stuff that never made me get bored, but made me finish the book in three days. I particularly enjoy when the main character fell in love with a man much older than her, it was very romantic. That's why i would totally recommend this book to young girls that would like to become one of those famous models, it would explain their lives in a very wide way.


Thanks to http://images.contentreserve.com/ImageType-100/0293-1/%7B4B457242-FE9E-4C7F-B96C-6FC560F49C76%7DImg100.jpg for the picture