City of Girls

July 12, 2019 |  No Comments

City of Girls

by Elizabeth Gilbert

Date Published: June 4, 2019
Published By: Riverhead Books
Page Count: 470


Publisher’s Description:

“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 ninety-five 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. 


My Star Rating:

4 of 5 stars

My Review:

City of GirlsCity of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First, let me save that I wavered between a 3-star and 4-star rating on this. On one hand, this story was slightly reminiscent of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” in the way that it was written autobiographical style from an older woman with a crazy as hell past. The issue that brings is, it leads me to put the two stories side by side to compare them. And Evelyn Hugo was, let’s be honest, a great book (IMO).

In this book, there were lots of high points where things were wild and fast and interesting, but then there were quite a few lagging sections. There were several points in this book where I was honestly thinking to myself, do I even like this POV character? She’s kind of a terrible person! Interesting, but morally bankrupt. And there were also several parts in this book where I thought to myself, it’s like a conquest to see how many shockingly dark and immoral things you could squeeze into one book done by one character.

But there were a lot of redeeming qualities in this story. For one, the POV character is telling you she knows she was horrible. But then there were also all the other characters that came into and out of play throughout. I found the characters and the setting to be very vibrant. The one character, Anthony, who she fell in love with early on, boy was he fun to read!

I never did quite figure out why “Angela” needed to know ALL of this. Maybe I missed something.

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