City of Girls, Elizabeth Gilbert
City of Girls, Elizabeth Gilbert
127 Rating(s)
List: $25.00 | Sale: $16.50
Club: $12.50

City of Girls

Bestseller

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert

Narrator: Blair Brown

Unabridged: 15 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 06/04/2019


Synopsis

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 Elizabeth Gilbert

If you have ever seen the movie Coyote Ugly, you have seen the adaptation of the article written by American author, Elizabeth Gilbert, for GQ Magazine, which described her experiences working as a bartender on the Lower East Side of New York City. Gilbert held many jobs after earning her degree in Political Science from New York University. All of her labor jobs gave her inspiration for her fictional books and magazine articles.

Elizabeth Gilbert had almost immediate success with her writing, but the pinnacle of success for her was her book Eat, Pray, Love, which was written after a very upsetting divorce and she took off on a healing adventure throughout the world. After her first book, which was a collection of short stories, Pilgrim, she was praised as a " young writer of incandescent talent". Eat, Pray, Love was translated into thirty languages, selling over 12 million copies. In 2010, Julia Robert's starred in a film adaptation of the movie.

Gilbert's latest books are Committed, The Signature of All Things, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, and City of Girls, about the NYC theater world of the 1940's. She lives in NYC, rural New Jersey, and anywhere else her adventures take her.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ron on June 03, 2019

Gilbert’s narrator is an old woman named Vivian, looking back at herself as a naive 19-year-old who had just failed out of Vassar College. (She ranked 361 in a class of 362, surpassing only a girl who contracted polio.) Baffled by a daughter with no matrimonial or professional prospects, Vivian’s pa......more

Goodreads review by Justin on September 01, 2019

City of Girls is a genre-bending, uniquely-structured, light-hearted, deeply-profound kind of novel, whatever that means. I'm honestly still in awe of it. The first half has zero conflict and yet never fails to engage. I devoured every moment of being young and careless in 1940's New York, amid show......more

Goodreads review by Nilufer on June 13, 2020

Three joyful, glamorous time travelling to 40’s, but travel time was too long stars!!! I really tossed around giving three to four stars, because I enjoyed the writing but not sure about the character development! I really enjoyed some parts so much! Having fun to learn Broadway theater life and sca......more

Goodreads review by Beth on August 06, 2019

City of Girls started as a 5 star read. 2/3 in it fell to 3 stars. By the end I settled on 2 stars. The story is not fluid, nor does it make much sense. In 1940's New York City theater district, the play 'City of Girls' is gaining momentum. 'City of Girls' is an off-Broadway play written and execute......more

Goodreads review by jessica on May 07, 2020

okay, first i want to say that if i sent someone a letter asking ‘what were you to my father?’ and they responded with a 450+ page answer, i would literally roll my eyes so hard, they would probably get permanently stuck. but seriously, how in the world did elizabeth gilbert think that writing this......more


Quotes

Praise for City of Girls:

"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
 
"Of course, one could — and many will — read it on the beach, but consider instead staying up late to turn pages after midnight, next to an open window on a hot summer night, fireworks flaring in the distance. That experience would mirror this novel’s story and its style: intimate and richly sensual, razzle-dazzle with a hint of danger." – USA Today
 
"A light, fizzy summer cocktail with a strikingly complex finish… Gilbert’s book is as deliciously refreshing as a fizzy summer drink, but truly, in its second half, it’s also more like fine wine, thoughtfully crafted to be savored for its benefits." – The Boston Globe
 
"The perfect summer read." – Hello Giggles
 
"A glamorous, sexy novel." – PopSugar
 
"Packed with showgirls, playboys, and sex—lots of it…being a ‘good girl’ isn’t all it’s cracked up to be." – InStyle
 
"…pure, unadulterated entertainment." – The Daily Beast

"The descriptions... of outfits, of drinks, of faces—are delicious, and the smart, snappy dialogue races along like a screwball movie." – The Seattle Times
 
"Fiercely feminist, as well as jam-packed with uplifting truths about love and freedom, this phantasmagoria is both a feast for the senses and a balm for the soul." – Esquire.com

"City of Girls is smart and wise, and if you also want your beach read to speak to your sense of desire, longing, adventure, and coming of age, it certainly will not disappoint." –goop.com

"A fizzy cocktail of a novel…" – The Wall Street Journal 

"Sparkling… City of Girls begs big questions about sex, chosen families, and being a woman." – Marie Claire 

"When Elizabeth Gilbert set out to write City of Girls, her goal was to tell a story of female promiscuity that didn’t end in death or misfortune—a direct and delicious rebuttal to the tragic, sexist fates of the Emma Bovarys and Anna Kareninas of the canon. The result is a wildly entertaining summertime romp." –Elle

"City of Girls tells the story of teenage Vivian’s discovery of the life she wants to live: one full of pleasure, fun, frivolity and even scandal among the charismatic people who populate her aunt’s midtown theater." – Good Housekeeping

"[In City of Girls] there are some of the most brilliant and truthful evocations of youthful sexual exploration that you’ll ever read. Gilbert says in her foreword that she set out to write a novel about ‘promiscuous girls whose lives are not destroyed by their sexual desires’. She has triumphed." – Spectator USA

"Elizabeth Gilbert—the best-selling writer, matron saint of divorced women, modern symbol of follow-your-bliss wisdom, believer in magic, and Oprah approved contemporary guru—has decided to go back in time… Ultimately, Gilbert wants us to question all the judgement society tosses at women like Vivian—and to question the nagging voice inside every girl telling her to be good." –Cosmopolitan
 
"City of Girls embraces. . . the power of a woman breaking from a traditional path, and the wisdom of taking true, two-handed joy in the pleasures that life offers up… City of Girls is an unbeatable beach read, loaded with humor and insight." – Newsday 

"This is a booze-and sex-filled romp that, in the words of showgirl Celia Ray, ‘makes you want to smoke too many cigarettes and laugh with your head thrown back.’" – KMUW / Wichita NPR 89.1
 
"City of Girls centers on relationships among women… exploring the promises and pitfalls of female friendships [and] the importance both of owning our mistakes and forgiving ourselves as well as others." – CS Monitor

"City of Girls is more than a love letter to New York—it’s a colorful portrait of what it means to be part of a theater company, or more accurately, to become a ‘theater person’… Gilbert brings the reader into every moment happening just behind the curtain."  --Bust Magazine