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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.… (more)
Vivian Morris is telling her story in a letter to the daughter of an old friend. Who this friend was and what he meant to her isn't revealed until the last 90 pages of the novel.
The story largely revolves around the lives of a group of down-at-heal theatricals under the management of Vivian's aunt Peg, in a run-down theatre in New York in the late 1930s/40s, who Vivian has taken up residence with after dropping out of college. The story is told from her old age.
I wasn't sure whether I was going to get into this novel, but ultimately the characters really drew me in. Not that I want a writer to constantly be repeating themselves, but it was so different from [The Signature of All Things] which I really loved.
Part of the problem for me at the begining, I now see, is I am not a fan of coming of age novels, which the first quarter of the book is. But as Vivian grows and becomes more interesting, and the variety of other characters, I was soon snagged.
It will be a while before we get anything new from Gilbert, as she has withdrawn the novel due to be published this year for political reasons, as it was set in Russia. ( )
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. ( )
City of Girls is a guilty pleasure beach read from Elizabeth Gilbert. Her breezy easy writing style is filled with comedic elements and a rich history of NYC theater in the 1930’s-1940’s. WW11 is an important part of the novel too. This coming of age tale is wrapped in empowerment. The ending stunned me with unrelenting tears. I didn’t see that coming. The array of characters surrounding Vivian Morris are beyond loveable. Her creation of family when her somewhat cold parents fail her makes for a rewarding read. ( )
Review: Written as a reflection on a full life Viviann takes the reader on her life journey through the 1940's New York. Starting with her Aunt's theater company as a costume director (self appointed title) and ending up finding great joy and skill at the task that carries her through life in the garment making trade. Vivid characters that come to full life over time with the book this was one great story to expierance.
Quotes, notes and snippets: Snort through his nose and say "Must be nice galbanting around the world, living in make believe and spending by the hundreds." And I would think, that does sound nice.
What was going on in that theater behind closed doors? ( )
You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
---COLETTE
Dedication
For Margaret Cordi--- my eyes, my ears, my beloved friend
First words
I received a letter from his daughter the other day.
Quotations
The secret to falling in love so fast, of course, is not to know the person at all.
This is what flirtation is in its purest form—a whole conversation held without words. Flirtation is a series of silent questions that one person asks another person with their eyes. And the answer to those questions is always the same word: Maybe.
Asking no further questions is the song of my people.
The dirty little whores had been disposed of; the man was allowed to remain. Of course, I didn't recognize the hypocrisy back then. But Lord, I recognize it now.
After a certain age, we are all walking around this world in bodies made of secrets and shame and sorrow and old, unhealed injuries. Our hearts grow sore and misshapen around all this pain—yet somehow, still, we carry on.
(As I once said to Marjorie, "The only two things I've ever been good at in this world are sex and sewing." To which she responded: "Well, honey—at least you chose the right one to monetize.")
The war had invested me with an understanding that life is both dangerous and fleeting, and thus there is no point in denying yourself pleasure or adventure while you are here.
Sex is so often a cheat—a shortcut of intimacy. A way to skip over knowing somebody's heart by knowing, instead, their mere body.
Except theirs was the sort of love that best thrives when a husband and wife are separated by the distance of an entire continent. ("Don't laugh," my grandmother said. "A lot of marriages would work better that way.")
History has a pulse, they say—but mostly I have never been able to hear it, not even when it is drumming right in my goddamn ears.
"So you're not only beautiful, but gifted as well? Imagine that! And they say the Lord never gives with both hands!"
"Honestly, Peg—I don't know why that woman doesn't trust me. I'm very, very, very trustworthy." "The more 'very's' you, Billy, the less trustworthy you sound. You do know that, right?"
"I've seen him act, if you can call it acting. I saw him in Gates of Noon. He's got the vacant eyes of a milk cow, but he looked like a million bucks in his aviator scarf."
"Pegsy," he said, and that one word—the way he said it—seemed to contain decades of love.
His was a predator's stare. You might have said he was good-looking, if you could release your concerns about when he was going to eviscerate you.
And so I slid toward marriage, like a car sliding off the road on a scree of loose gravel.
"I like you, kiddo, and once I like a person, I can only like them always. That's a rule of my life."
I didn't pursue any men during the war. For one thing, they were difficult to come by; most everyone was overseas. For another thing, I didn't feel like playing around. In keeping with the new spirit of seriousness and sacrifice that blanketed New York, I more or less put my sexual desire away from 1942 until 1945—the way you might cover your good furniture with sheets while you go off on vacation.
Sleep became a golden commodity that everyone longed for but nobody had.
I liked to witness the man's surprise and joy at being propositioned so blatantly by a good-looking woman. They would light up every time. I have always loved that moment. It is as though you have brought Christmas to an orphanage.
I liked to leave their beds before they started telling me things about themselves that I didn't want to know.
If you're wondering if any of those men ever fell in love with me—well, sometimes they did. But I always managed to talk them out of it.
Anyway, at some point in a woman's life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time. After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is.
"The field of honor is a painful field," Olive went on at last, as though Peg had not spoken. "That's what my father taught me when I was young. He taught me that the field of honor is not a place where children can play. Children don't have any honor, you see, and they aren't expected to, because it's too difficult for them. It's too painful. But to become an adult, one must step into the field of honor. Everything will be expected of you now. You will need to be vigilant in your principles. You will be judged. If you make mistakes, you must account for them. There will be instances when you must cast aside your impulses and take a higher stance than another person—a person without honor—might take. Such instances may hurt, but that's why honor is a painful field. Do you understand?"
(Lucky is the soul whose only troubles are self-inflicted.)
"She's more church than the Church itself," he said.
"The world ain't straight. You grow up thinking things are a certain way. You think there are rules. You think there's a way that things have to be. You try to live straight. But the world doesn't care about your rules, or what you believe. The world ain't straight, Vivian. Never will be. Our rules, they don't mean a thing. The world just happens to you sometimes, is what I think. And people just gotta keep moving through it, best they can."
I came to cherish his face precisely because it was his. Even his burn scars became beautiful to my eye. (His skin looked like the weathered binding of some ancient, sacred book.)
"Things happen to people. We are the way we are—there's nothing to be done for it."
That's when he turned to look at me. "I can't live without you, Vivian," he said. "Good. You'll never have to." And that, Angela, was the closest your father and I ever came to saying I love you.
We never asked much of Nathan. We thought he was good enough, just the way he was. We were proud of him sometimes just for getting through the day.
There had never been a correct work for what Frank and I were to each other, so the absence I felt after his death was both private and unnamed.
I grew out of my sorrow—the way people usually do, eventually.
This is what I've found about life, as I've gotten older: you start to lose people, Angela.
The world can begin to feel lonely and sparse, teeming though it may be freshly minted young souls.
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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