Vivian Morris finds college of absolutely no interest, finds her pleasures elsewhere and is asked to leave, her parents have no idea what to do with her so ship her off to New York to stay with her eccentric Aunt Peg. Viv finds herself in the utopia of absolute freedom and plunges into the hedonistic pleasures available to her. The dressmaking skills she gained from her grandmother, ensure her popularity with the showgirls and actors in her aunt’s company at the Lily Theatre, where they live and work. This book is a telling of Viv’s adventures and life. It’s a bit like watching an old feature film, the detail brings it all to life and the story is fascinating if a bit bumpy but that makes it feel real. Highly recommended. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I absolutely adored this book! I got married in New York and have such fond memories of the city. It was a joy to be transported to a 1940's New York and I could almost smell the old theatre the descriptions were so detailed. I especially liked the mystery surrounding the identity of Angela and I didn't guess who her father was so the reveal took me by surprise. I've stopped short of 5 start because I found the pace of the book a bit slow to get into at the beginning and it wasn't until the big scandal in the middle that I really started to pick it up at every opportunity. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this wonderful book. I've already recommended it to my book groups, friends and family.

City of Girls

Vivian Morris arrives in New York in 1940, after dropping out of college, to the disapproval of her parents. She joins her Aunt Peg at her theatre, the Lily Playhouse. There she becomes the costumer for the ragtag bunch of showgirls, actors and performers who live and work there. At the same time, she discovers her sexuality and the freedom of living in New York.

As a concept, the story is good and Vivian is a likeable character who deserves her happiness. However, for me there were two problems with the book. The first is that it was overlong for the content - whilst description is always good, the level of detail gone into at times was bordering on tedium. Secondly, I struggled with the fact that the whole story was intended to be a letter from Vivian to the daughter of a friend in 2010. Would anybody really discuss their sexuality in such detail with an almost stranger?  Not in my world.

Sadly, not a book for me.

It's 1940 and Vivian Morris is 19 years old. She's a source of shame to her parents and older brother, after spectacularly failing her first year of college. She is sent to New York to live with her Aunt Peg. And so begins an awakening for this naive young woman. She is enchanted by New York City, and the characters she meets who are part of the cast and crew of Aunt Peg's theatre playhouse. As she forms a friendship with Celia, the dance captain, her eyes are opened to a world she could never have imagined existed. Sexual abandon, dancing, drinking and a sense of freedom she revels in. 

When Arthur and Edna Watson enter her world, things are set to change beyond her imagining. Edna, a successful stage actress, becomes the star in a new play, written by Peg's errant husband, Billy. The play, City of Girls, is a resounding success but things begin to disintegrate for Vivvie. Arthur, believing his wife to be playing away with the man Vivvie has fallen in love with, persuades her to come on a night out with him and Celia. They end up in a hotel together, but unbeknownst to them, their menage a trois, has been captured by a salacious newspaper reporter. Once again shamed, Vivvie returns to her parents, and feels like she is now simply going through the motions of life. Peg comes to her rescue, and she returns to a New York that has changed since the end of the war, as has she. She enters a quieter phase of life, and during this time, she forms a connection with a man called Frank, who knew her now deceased brother. Their relationship is beyond friendship, and yet they never have a physically intimate relationship. He is however, the love of her life. They share their stories on endless walks, and are devoted to one another in a way that others would perhaps fail to understand. 

City of Girls is a sweeping tale of self-discovery, shame, redemption, friendship and love and is simply a wonderful read.

The first third of this is frothy fun - Viv moves to New York to stay with her aunt (who runs a theatre), starts making the costumes, discovers sex. Then she makes a mistake and is caught up in a big scandal, around the same time as the USA enters the war. She returns home to escape the scandal but then returns to New York, which is where the story gets a bit more serious. Her post-war story, of friendships, business and an unusual love story is the rest of the novel. 

As part of the scandal, she's told that she just isn't a very interesting person and sadly that's actually true. In some ways the rest of the book is her trying to become one, which sort of succeeds. But Vivian is mostly interesting because of where she is and who she associates with, she herself isn't that interesting (and the lengthy list of sexual conquests doesn't make her so, the only one who was interesting was the streetwise actor). The friendships she makes are the strength of the novel, particularly Marjorie. I'd read a book about Marjorie! 

It's very readable, and a really interesting picture of 1940s-70s New York, but ultimately fairly forgettable,

This is a story that ticks A LOT of boxes for me; Vivian Morris is a fascinating character with an interesting story. I absolutely love Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing so I was excited to read this fiction. From the offset, 1940s America is brought to life and at first, each character suits the stereotype I’d expect of theatre makers of the time. The unravelling of each one (from showgirl to Hollywood star) kept me turning the page.

Promiscuous women, single mothers and lesbian couples powering through those decades flipped my initial expectation completely upside down. Towards the end, I completely grasped the underlying feminism that had been filtered when she (and all the characters) were younger and living through the era. The focus on Vivian’s sexual exploits is one of the reasons I think this book stands out amongst others and will definitely be memorable, whether the audience enjoy this or not!

For me, the outcome was such a positive representation of a modern woman and I liked the angle it was from. Her relationships at the end of the book (particularly with Frank) were really moving to say they had felt so understated. But I guess that was the beauty of them?

I received a copy from NetGalley for an honest review.

I absolutely loved this. I really liked the very human, fallible and flawed characters, and I found myself thinking of them while not reading. Beautiful writing too.

The story starts in 1940 when a young privileged girl is sent home from Vassar. Her parents think it would be a good plan to send her to live with her Aunt Peg in New York City.  Aunt Peg owns a small theatre called The Lily, soon after arrival she was put to work making costumes for the actors and showgirls.  She has always been a great seamstress and during the times of rations she is able to buy cheap antique cloths and use the fabrics to make wonderful outfits.  She forms a friendship with one of the showgirls who showed her the darker side of New York, they drank and partied at all the famous night spots. Then she made the mistake of falling in love with the lifestyle that’s where the story gets interesting.  Warm and sometimes sad this is a great book.

A book run of escapism and characters with big personalities and complicated lives then City of Girls is the book for you during these unprecedented times. 

Where best to come of age then 1940s Manhattan just before America enters WWII where Vivian has escaped her parents and their suburban life to live with her aunt in a run down theatre where she creates costumes for the show girls and then goes out partying until dawn. Full of fantastic 40s details with glamour, excess, sex and glitz on every page as they prepare to put on the greatest show that the theatre has ever seen. Elizabeth Gilbert pushes at expectations that society put on how young women should behave in the 1940s as she pushes open the boundaries of becoming a woman free from these expectations with her own money and in control of her future. 

This was an enjoyable read and I found myself full immersed with the details of the decade. Best not play a drink game each time a character knocks back a book or you'll end up clearing out the alcohol section of your local supermarket (look what happened to the toilet paper aisle at the beginning of this pandemic)! I really enjoyed Elizabeth Gilbert's previous book, Big Magic and I'm glad I've finally tried some of her fiction. 

(Netgalley provided me with a copy of this book).

This is a wonderful story of the adventures  of a showgirl called Vivian Morris. As you can guess Vivian does not lead a conventional life but she does lead an interesting one. She was born in the USA in the twenties and takes us through the war years and into the present. Her motto was never apologise for who you are. I am sure you will instantly love Vivian, her friends and her escapades.

I loved this! Picked it up over a weekend and was struggling to choose my next read. Entertaining story and characters. 
I would choose other books from this author based on this book.

This book was absolutely delightful. I don't think I had ever read something similar. It was liberating and bohemian, and full of passion too. The book tells the story of Vivian, who moves to New York to spend some time with her aunt Peg. In the city, she discovers what it means to live on the edge. She makes friends that belong to a different world, she dances till the early hours of the morning and has sex with different men. It's a refreshing novel full of humour and theatre references. I enjoyed it very much!

It was a very nice story (and made me think a lot about feminism and the role of women in society) and, even though I thought Vivian's final thoughts and adventures in New York seemed a bit out of nowhere, I would recommend this book to anyone.

I enjoyed this book far more than I thought I would.  The story follows Vivian ,who was no angel but also had a degree a innocence about her, through her life from a young woman to old age.  You meet the people who were important to Vivian and  those who have an impact and left a memory good and bad.  Just a beautiful read start to finish

There is so much to this book. I found myself welling up as i read the final chapter. Following a naive 19 year old through her life as she writes her letter to Angela on how she met her father. It was not what I was expecting at all. And everytime the story went in a new direction, i didn't know what to expect. From the second Vivian steps foot in New York we are transported to a new world that we experience through Vivian. Each character introduced I fell in love with as they crashed into Vivian's life. Shaping her into a woman i felt I knew towards the end of the book. When I thought Elizabeth couldn't bring anymore characters to hold in my heart she gives us Frank. From her drunken escapades, to sewing wedding dresses and one mistake, we watch her slowly and subtly transform. I loved this book so much, I know that it will be one I will return to a recommend to friends (I already have recommneded it to a few already) It was beautifully written. Beautifully detailed. Built, like one of the many costumes Vivian makes.

I have mixed feelings about this book. Although I did enjoy it, I wasn't too sure about the whole premise of the book being a letter to Angela. I understand that in telling the story, detail needs to be given, but I'm not sure if this was an actual letter whether so much detail would have been put in, especially in regards to sexual encounters Vivian had through her life. 

I enjoyed the setting of 1940s New York, and the ending was good, but a mixed review for me.

This was really a tale of two halves from my perspective and when I say “halves”, I’m actually talking about thirds - the first two thirds of the book were deceptively simple and I was wondering what I was missing. It appeared to be a novel of mere frippery: frothy without much substance. Great for an escape into 1940s NYC with starlets and showbiz-types who were free from conservative thought and behaviour. Even the main character, Vivian, seemed to have little substance to her, with one of the other characters commenting very unkindly (but rather truthfully) that:

“The thing that you don’t understand about yourself, Vivian, Is that you are not an interesting person... I believe that you’ve been labouring under the misapprehension that you are interesting...”

That was exactly how I felt. I had also been feeling maddened by the constant mention of Angela, to whom this tale told, with interruptions continually breaking my ability to become engrossed in the book - sentences like “I was always pretty, Angela” and “Not to worry, Angela” peppered throughout. 

Then, the final third of the book made sense of the first two thirds and Vivian became a character full of life and substance. I became interested in who she was, once she had started herself to discover herself the answer to that question and ended up in tears reading the conclusion. The final third truly saved the book - I just wish a hint of that poignancy had shown itself sooner in the novel so the first two thirds didn’t feel like such a slog with a superficial protagonist. 

I’m so glad to have finished this book and would recommend it to those who like female fiction with real heart.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Bloomsbury Fiction and Elizabeth Gilbert for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately this book didn’t do it for me.

I’ve only dropped one star because it’s a good premise and it’s well written, it just didn’t engage me and I couldn’t relate.

I liked the idea of a book where women are not destroyed by their sexual desires but I’m not sure the book was executed in a way that did this.

Read if you like reading about other people’s sex lives!

This is my first book by Elizabeth Gilbert and therefore did not know what to expect, the writing is lovely and very descriptive of New York during the 1940's.  However I found it a bit of a chore to keep on reading, I didn't find any of the characters very engaging and did not care for their stories.  I struggled to see where the story was going to go.  This book was just not for me.

Thank you to NetGalley & publisher for the copy in exchange for a honest review.

Female sexuality and glamour in forties New York.

While WWII is still far away in Europe, 19-year-old Vivian Morris is sent down from her ivy league girls’ college. Not knowing what else to do with their daughter, her parents pack her off to live with Aunt Peg who runs a down-at-heel New York theatre. Vivian takes to the bohemian lifestyle with vigour.

City of Girls has all the forties glamour and wisecracking witty dialogue of a Carole Lombard film. Narrated by the protagonist looking back on her life, the humour is balanced with much pathos. On top of all this, Gilbert comments on society’s moralisation of female sexual agency.

Joyful and poignant.

My thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the ARC.

I didn't get on with City of Girls to begin with, but I don't think I appreciated how commercial Gilbert's writing is. Once I had adjusted to that (it's a little like reading YA fiction, albeit with more sex), and once Vivian had grown up a bit and become more likeable, I enjoyed it. Most of the book - certainly the first half - is a slow build/scene-setting, and I preferred the quicker pace of the second half. Having said that, Gilbert's evocation of 1940s-70s New York City is interesting, and she's clearly done some research. The ending is rather poignant; I would recommend this for a holiday read, as it's quite easy to pick up and put down.