AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!From the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and The Signature of All Things, a delicious novel of glamour, sex, and adventure, about a young woman discovering that you don’t have to be a good girl to be a good person.“A spellbinding novel about love, freedom, and finding your own happiness.” – PopSugar“Intimate and richly sensual, … finding your own happiness.” – PopSugar
“Intimate and richly sensual, razzle-dazzle with a hint of danger.” –USA Today
“Pairs well with a cocktail…or two.” –TheSkimm
“Life is both fleeting and dangerous, and there is no point in denying yourself pleasure, or being anything other than what you are.”
Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love.
In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance. Her affluent parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant, crumbling midtown theater called the Lily Playhouse. There Vivian is introduced to an entire cosmos of unconventional and charismatic characters, from the fun-chasing showgirls to a sexy male actor, a grand-dame actress, a lady-killer writer, and no-nonsense stage manager. But when Vivian makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal, it turns her new world upside down in ways that it will take her years to fully understand. Ultimately, though, it leads her to a new understanding of the kind of life she craves – and the kind of freedom it takes to pursue it. It will also lead to the love of her life, a love that stands out from all the rest.
Now eighty-nine years old and telling her story at last, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life – and the gusto and autonomy with which she approached it. “At some point in a woman’s life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time,” she muses. “After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is.” Written with a powerful wisdom about human desire and connection, City of Girls is a love story like no other.
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This book never stopped taking me by surprise – it is wildly endearing and epically fun, the type of historical fiction that is never what you expect but that makes you feel the vivacity and warmth of past lives in such a fantastic way. For a while, I told myself I didn’t much like Vivian, the narrator, but somehow I still found myself sneaking in a few pages of reading whenever I could between meetings or at my lunch hour, never quite able to get enough of her story.
Enjoyed this book. Great summer read moves quickly and a great story
A wonderful insight to the 1940’s theater people in New York City. Elizabeth Gilbert entertains and enlightens us in what life was like for dancers, actors, seamstresses, etc. in the Off Broadway world.
I left my Kindle on a plane while reading this book, and couldn’t bear to not finish it so I ran out to buy it. Truly excellent writing kept me totally enthralled. Wonderful!
A great book! It fell a bit short at the end, but overall, very good read.
Equal parts fun and thoughtful, I found City of Girls to be a lovely and engaging story. At times I felt like it was a little long, but I loved the sense of indulgence and joy conveyed in such a tumultuous time period. I definitely recommend this to anyone who needs a good escape read with plenty of juicy romance, drama, and a good helping of heart.
Love love loved this book!
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert is a wonderful, but slow read. When the story opens it’s 2010 and the narrator, elderly Vivian Morris, is confronted with a letter written by a woman named Angela. Angela is “his daughter,” an unnamed man who is revealed much later in the book. The narrative is directed at Angela and Vivian’s voice is so strong that I immediately felt as though she was speaking directly to me.
Despite the smidgeon of info that opens the book, Gilbert sprinkles enough crumbs to start the reader following behind, gathering them up. The early chapters, set in 1940, illustrate how Vivian, nineteen, was ousted from Vassar, and thrust into her Aunt Peg’s theater world in New York City. Instantly I was at Vivian’s side traipsing the streets of NYC partying up a storm all night and sleeping well into the day. Young Vivian’s voice is honest, upfront, and expressive in elucidating her immature, selfish desires and ambitions. But her witty self-deprecation makes her likeable. When explaining her lack of academic success being rooted in drinking too much, too late into night, Vivian says, “There were other obstacles as well. I had all those cigarettes to smoke, for instance. In short: I was busy.”
Early on you learn that Vivian was groomed to live an emotionally vacuous, though wealthy life, that she’s gorgeous, and embodies one single skill. She’s a gifted seamstress. Her prowess comes via her deceased grandmother whose earlier tutelage and guidance is Vivian’s sole mark of adult affection and goodness in her childhood. It’s with the story of her grandmother’s death that we feel her grief amid her bad choices and wild, “unladylike” behavior. All of this creates a sympathetic nineteen year old who understandably experiments with all that comes with living in the apartments above Aunt Peg’s worn-out, dusty, but always busy, Lily Theater.
The dialogue is snappy and fun. When Vivian meets Olive, her aunt Peg’s go-to woman, over-burdened keeper of everything responsible in their world Vivian asks how long she’s worked for her aunt. “Since Moses was in nappies,” Olive says. “And what are your duties at the theater?” Vivian asks. “To catch things that are falling through mid-air, right before they hit the ground and shatter.”
And so Olive does just that.
I could go on and on with examples of the slick turns of phrase and snappy, playful back and forth between showgirls, homeless but important actors who seek refuge at the Lily, the seedy men they love, and Vivian who plays with her sexuality, her freedom, her dreams, protected by her associations with savvier, older, new friends.
I’ve underlined sections on nearly every single page of the book. The writing is that good. But, with all the delicious language the middle gets a little stuffed and slow. While I gobbled up each and every word, I was conscience of the slow turning plot. At times I asked “where is this going?” I was loving every bit of it, but for people who think plot is king, this book may be harder going than for a reader who appreciates language, character, and obscured but powerful hints at a party girl’s wounded soul.
As America is drawn into World War II, the story turns toward that, taking several plot paths that illuminate the consequences of a world in turmoil and how those damaged people enter Vivian’s orbit and she learns that careless behavior can change one’s life forever. It’s her sewing that keeps her afloat and gives her purpose beyond her now fraying party-life.
Vivian’s narration is a slow romp, well worth the read. It may not be something that readers blow through in one weekend, but that is its charm. Closing the book to do something else for a bit means looking forward to what Vivian and her cohorts will tumble into next.
Original Review published in the Pittsburgh Post–Gazette
Exceptional read…I read a lot and this is the best I’ve read in a while.
Can’t decide if I liked it or not. Seemed like it wasn’t plausible that someone would tell all this personal history to another person in a letter.
Well written and hard to put down. I am still yet to understand how this book and why made me feel good. Story of a woman and her life through ups and down and finding herself in the world and taking a step forward and embracing herself. Friendships and adventures, mistakes and loses, but mostly doing what you love finding yourself and embracing and accepting yourself.
My favorite fiction novel written in 2019.
Once you introduce truth into a room, the room may never be the same again.”
And boy, when Vivian Morris enters the scene, everything changes! We first meet Vivian as she begins to share her life story with someone we learn only later she tangentially knows.
In 1940, kicked out of college, Vivian is sent to New York City to live with her father’s sister Aunt Peg who owns and runs the Lily Playhouse. During her stay she “grows up”: she works as a costumer for the Lily, she gets to know all the things grown ups do in 1940s Manhattan. She also learns the things that mess up grownups can tear your world apart.
Now, at almost 90, Vivian tells her story with grace and gumption. She’s had good and bad times, wins, losses, love, sex, death, anger and “made it up as she went along”. All in all, she’s survived, she’s learned she has to change. Her Aunt Peg may have said it best :”Resist change at your own peril, Vivian. When something ends, let it end.” Not a bad way to end life looking back I’d say
All in all, Vivian is at peace with her life and what she has done. And as this book has grown and launched, I’ve seen Elizabeth Gilbert’s transformation reflected within its pages. I first fell in love with Gilbert’s work with “Eat Pray Love” and her other work from there forward to today. I purchased this as a gift to myself for my 63rd birthday and saved it to be my *First Book of 2020*. Never one to be thrown by bad reviews I chose not to read ANY until I’d finished this. I am so excited to hear someone bought the book to do a movie “treatment”. It will be interesting to see how that unfolds.
This book checked all my boxes to put it on my used book wish list. Each time I finish one of her books, it will stay with me a while. With maturation as a writer and a human, Gilbert will long be remembered for this book. Can’t wait to see what’s next! Highly Recommended 5/5
Incredible read set in the 1940’s New York Theater scene. LOVED it on many levels. Beautifully told.
There are delicious aspects to this story of Vivian, a young, upper-crust young woman who in 1940 flunks out of Vassar, does not wish to live at home with her parents, and so departs for New York City to live with her Aunt Peg and a company of vaudevillian ne’er-do-wells in the crumbling Lily Playhouse. It is quite a collection of characters. Before too long, Vivian discovers her abilities as a costume mistress, falls in with showgirl Celia Ray, and loses her virginity. It’s a coming of age that takes a while. Vivian’s and Celia’s wild ways make the Summer of Love look like Amateur Night–until there are consequences. It’s a rollicking tale of iconic times in one of the world’s greatest cities, and about what it means to be a human navigating life’s challenges. It’s an entertaining saga of American life
Gilbert’s book is a lesson for us all, but especially for the younger set.
Wouldn’t it be REALLY great if we humans would stop wasting so much time being ashamed of who we are, and instead, just passionately stepped into ourselves?
If I had a do-over, I’d be rocking the world—Full on Me + Youth! What could be better!
Gloria Squitiro: Author of May Cause Drowsiness and Blurred Vision: The Side Effects of Bravery—YOU, Too! can OVERCOME ANXIETY and live a bigger more carefree life—Become a New and Better You!
#YayWomenWriters
Loved this book! The fashion, the friendships, the joy, the heartache! I read it in one afternoon and loved the story.
I generally love Gilbert’s work, but I’m sorry to say this one didn’t thrill me. For some reason, I just couldn’t quite believe the characters. I did read the whole thing, and there were parts I enjoyed, but over-all, it was just okay.
City of Girls, is a wonderful story about a woman’s life and her explanation of who she is and how she got there. The glamorous story is told through a letter to someone, named Angela. I won’t say who Angela is, because that is part of the story! This book had me from the fun feathered cover to the last page of the book. I decided to download the audible so my mother and I could listen to it in the car. My mother loved it too! It was awkward in a few spots, listening to the sordid details of Vivian’s sex life with my mother sitting next to me, but we both laughed and nodded through most of the narration. I love the voice of the reader, but especially the voice of the author! I never would have guessed this is the author of Eat, Pray, Love! It’s totally different. My sister in-law was reading this same book at the same time, and I had no idea, but I liked the story so much, I sent her a link. She texted me, saying how like-minded we were, because she was already reading it. I can’t say enough wonderful things about this story. I listened to the end twice for the message the author gives and because my mom passed away before she could hear the last thirty minutes of the book. She asked me to tell her the end my last visit to the hospital and I did, not knowing it was her last day. But, I played it out loud again after she passed, so her spirit could hear the message. This book will always mean a lot to me for several reasons, but it’s a great story, spun with love, hope, reality and acceptance for whoever you are or have become. Don’t miss this lively, sexy, realistic story.
Delightful read that takes the thrilling awkward in-between period between adolescence and womanhood. Set in the glitz and crumbling glamour of a NYC theatre on the verge of WW2. Satisfying and witty with delicious descriptions.