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Title details for City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert - Available

City of Girls

A Novel

by Elizabeth Gilbert
Blair Brown
Audiobook
6 of 10 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
6 of 10 copies available
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, 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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    June 4, 2019

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781984888495
      • File size: 436141 KB
      • Duration: 15:08:37

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 8, 2019
      Gilbert (The Signature of All Things) begins her beguiling tale of an innocent young woman discovering the excitements and pleasures of 1940 New York City with a light touch, as her heroine, Vivian Morris, romps through the city. Gradually the story deepens into a psychologically keen narrative about Vivian’s search for independence as she indulges her free spirit and sexuality. Freshly expelled from Vassar for not attending any classes, 19-year-old Vivian is sent by her parents to stay with her aunt Peggy Buell in Manhattan. Peg runs a scruffy theater that offers gaudy musical comedies to its unsophisticated patrons. As WWII rages in Europe, Vivian is oblivious to anything but the wonder behind the stage, as she becomes acquainted with the players in a new musical called City of Girls, including the louche leading man with whom she falls in love with passionate abandon. Vivian flits through the nightclubs El Morocco, the Diamond Horseshoe, and the Latin Quarter, where she hears Count Basie, Billie Holiday, and Louis Prima. Drinking heavily and scooting into the arms of numerous men, one night at the Stork Club she meets Walter Winchell, the notorious gossip columnist, who plays a pivotal role in the tabloid scandal in which Vivian becomes embroiled. Vivian’s voice—irreverent, witty, robust with slang—gradually darkens with guilt when she receives a devastating comeuppance. Eventually, she arrives at an understanding of the harsh truths of existence as the country plunges into WWII. Vivian—originally reckless and selfish, eventually thoughtful and humane—is the perfect protagonist for this novel, a page-turner with heart complete with a potent message of fulfillment and happiness.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Blair Brown delivers a superb narration of Elizabeth Gilbert's novel, which features the recollections of a 95-year-old New York seamstress who came of age during WWII. Brown's straightforward, charming depiction illuminates the vivacious young woman the wistful elderly narrator remembers, and her conversational pacing creates vibrant pictures for the listener. In 1940, after Vivian dropped out of Vassar and moved to Manhattan to help her aunt run a decrepit theater company, she discovered the joys of an unbridled sex life and the idiosyncrasies of the acting community. She also created stunning costumes for the company, including a middle-aged British actress memorably rendered by Brown. The storytelling device of the main character writing a letter is a bit clumsy, but the novel is entertaining. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
    • Good Reading Magazine
      This author’s first bestselling memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, was variously described as self-indulgent or marvellous. In a nod to some critics who found that contentious memoir portrayed an indulged, privileged white woman, Gilbert has this novel’s narrator to be just that, and what’s more, eventually realises it. A college drop-out from a wealthy family, Vivian is shunted off to New York in the 1940s to stay with an aunt, similarly shunned by the family, who owns a theatre in Hell’s Kitchen where she puts on tawdry little musicals, complete with dancers, showgirls and just three backdrops. Vivian, a talented seamstress, takes over theatre costume duties and, in her search of secondhand dress stores for fabrics, makes a lifelong friendship. The pre-war New York nightlife, heady, boozy, decadent and indulgent, becomes the norm for Vivian and one of her showgirl pals. Gilbert brings those showgirls to life, along with the other theatre residents. Her life changes when WWII starts and a top British theatre actress and her husband, marooned in New York because their home was bombed in London, become part of the entourage. Vivian considers the petite, sophisticated, chic actress the embodiment of wondrous womanhood and delights in making costumes for her in a new hit musical. That’s one of the strengths of this book, the complicated relationships that rise and fall with the fortunes of the main players. There’s betrayal, disgrace, an almost-marriage for Vivian, then war work entertaining dock workers, births, deaths and deep love, and always ... New York. It’s a paean of love for that city, all told by Vivian, a woman grown old in its embrace, who has moved beyond her self-indulgence. Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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