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.
