City of Girls
City of Girls
by Elizabeth Gilbert
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About the Book
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.
About the Author
Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of nine previous works of fiction and nonfiction, which collectively have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, spent more than two hundred weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and been translated into more than fifty languages. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. With more than 20 million views of her TED Talk and 2.7 million followers on her social media accounts, she continues to be one of the most beloved and influential writers of our age.
Editorial Reviews
"A novel as vibrant, sexy and wise as the author’s megahit Eat Pray Love." —People Magazine
"The girls and women of the book don't simply endure: they thrive, they dance, they live. Grab some champagne and toast…" —OprahMag.com
"Gilbert’s new novel… is a pitch-perfect evocation of the era’s tawdry glamour and a coming-of-age story whose fizzy surface conceals unexpected gradations of feeling." —New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice)
"Gilbert stays true to her pledge that she won’t let her protagonist’s sexuality be her downfall, like so many literary heroines before her. That may be the most radical thing about a novel that otherwise revels in the old-fashioned pleasures of storytelling — the right to fall down rabbit holes, and still find your own wonderland." —EntertainmentWeekly.com
"A breezy, entertaining read — and really, something better: a lively, effervescent, and sexy portrait of a woman living in a golden time… Passion, Gilbert never tires of informing us, that's the stuff of life. Not money, not the Darwinian struggle for survival, certainly not the family you are born with — passion is our raison d'etre. It's what makes us feel we are rocketing through the streets of New York City during the best days of our lives." —NPR
"Her story is rich with memorable characters… the larger-than-life leading lady… the alluring leading man—and a vibrant setting… Gilbert's expert world-building, flawless dialogue, and attention to detail places you right in the middle of the action." —Buzzfeed News
"The lush prose and firm belief in love that suffuses City of Girls will be a cool place to hide out as we enter a heated summer season of contentious presidential politics." —San Francisco Chronicle
"With all the conversations about sexual consent, it's risen up around the #MeToo movement… This author doesn't want us to forget there's also such a thing as female desire, the main character wants to have sex and she's not shy about hunting for it." —Whoopi Goldberg, The View 'Ladies Get Lit Summer Reads 2019'
"Glittering, hot, funny, and drenched in pleasure… Elizabeth Gilbert is one of the most dazzling and luminous writers of our generation. She invites us to challenge the rules, hunt down adventure, and bear hug the highs and lows of life." —Marie Forleo, MarieTV
"A moving novel about one woman's coming-of-empowerment… Gilbert wrote the kind of big-hearted historical novel you'll burn through in a weekend, then pass on to a friend." —Refinery 29
"[Elizabeth Gilbert’s] witty dialogue sparkles like diamonds in champagne." —The Washington Post