City of Girls

Kicked out of Vassar for mediocre grades, 19-year-old Vivian Morris is sent to 1940 New York City to live with Aunt Peg, who owns the bright-lights, falling-down Lily Playhouse. There, Vivian meets freewheeling theater types and comes to understand the untrammeled life she wants to lead. Gilbert's back to fiction after 2013's multi-best-booked memoir Big Magic.

Starred review from March 1, 2019
Someone told Vivian Morris in her youth that she would never be an interesting person. Good thing they didn't put money on it.The delightful narrator of Gilbert's (Big Magic, 2015, etc.) fourth novel begins the story of her life in the summer of 1940. At 19, she has just been sent home from Vassar. "I cannot fully recall what I'd been doing with my time during those many hours that I ought to have spent in class, but--knowing me--I suppose I was terribly preoccupied with my appearance." Vivian is very pretty, and she is a talented seamstress, but other than that, she is a silly, naïve girl who doesn't know anything about anything. That phase of her life comes to a swift end when her parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg. Peg is the proprietor of the Lily Playhouse, a grandiose, crumbing theater in midtown that caters to the tastes and wallets of the locals with week after week of original "revues" that inevitably feature a sweet young couple, a villain, a floozy, a drunken hobo, and a horde of showgirls and dancers kicking up a storm. "There were limits to the scope of the stories that we could tell," Vivian explains, "given that the Lily Playhouse only had three backdrops": 19th-century street corner, elegant parlor, and ocean liner. Vivian makes a close friend in Celia Ray, a showgirl so smolderingly beautiful she nearly scorches the pages on which she appears. "I wanted Celia to teach me everything," says Vivian, "about men, about sex, about New York, about life"--and she gets her wish, and then some. The story is jammed with terrific characters, gorgeous clothing, great one-liners, convincing wartime atmosphere, and excellent descriptions of sex, one of which can only be described (in Vivian's signature italics) as transcendent. There are still many readers who know Gilbert only as a memoirist. Whatever Eat Pray Love did or did not do for you, please don't miss out on her wonderful novels any longer.A big old banana split of a book, surely the cure for what ails you.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from April 8, 2019
Gilbert (The Signature of All Things) begins her beguiling tale of an innocent young woman discovering the excitements and pleasures of 1940 New York City with a light touch, as her heroine, Vivian Morris, romps through the city. Gradually the story deepens into a psychologically keen narrative about Vivian’s search for independence as she indulges her free spirit and sexuality. Freshly expelled from Vassar for not attending any classes, 19-year-old Vivian is sent by her parents to stay with her aunt Peggy Buell in Manhattan. Peg runs a scruffy theater that offers gaudy musical comedies to its unsophisticated patrons. As WWII rages in Europe, Vivian is oblivious to anything but the wonder behind the stage, as she becomes acquainted with the players in a new musical called City of Girls, including the louche leading man with whom she falls in love with passionate abandon. Vivian flits through the nightclubs El Morocco, the Diamond Horseshoe, and the Latin Quarter, where she hears Count Basie, Billie Holiday, and Louis Prima. Drinking heavily and scooting into the arms of numerous men, one night at the Stork Club she meets Walter Winchell, the notorious gossip columnist, who plays a pivotal role in the tabloid scandal in which Vivian becomes embroiled. Vivian’s voice—irreverent, witty, robust with slang—gradually darkens with guilt when she receives a devastating comeuppance. Eventually, she arrives at an understanding of the harsh truths of existence as the country plunges into WWII. Vivian—originally reckless and selfish, eventually thoughtful and humane—is the perfect protagonist for this novel, a page-turner with heart complete with a potent message of fulfillment and happiness.

Starred review from March 15, 2019
Girls Do Want to Have Fun?and EqualityAfter Vivian Morris, far more interested in clothes than scholarship, flunks out of Vassar in 1940, her indifferent, well-to-do, conservative parents ship her off to Aunt Peg in Manhattan, who owns and runs a ragtag theater in Midtown. Pretty, naive, and ardently open to suggestion, Vivian finds herself in a chaotic, cash-poor, improvisational, hard-drinking household overseen by stubbornly pragmatic Olive, upon whom Peg relies in ways Vivian cannot imagine. Celia, a ravishing showgirl who loves nothing more than a wild night on the town, promptly initiates Vivian into her life of revelry and casual sex. Their friendship, escapades, and quandaries make for an effervescent pre-WWII variation on Sex in the City (with a nod toward Auntie Mame).Gilbert's previous novel, The Signature of Things (2013), portrayed a nineteenth-century woman scientist who refused to be stymied by the sexism of her time. Here Gilbert writes against the traditional literary grain in which women are harshly punished for enjoying sexual freedom, though she adeptly camouflages her serious intent, which also embraces matters of race, class, and gay rights in a whirl of satin, lace, champagne bubbles, and smoke. And what keenly delicious fun Gilbert has bringing to life the struggling Lily Playhouse and its modest productions aimed at entertaining working-class audiences with larky song-and-dance numbers and leggy lovelies. Vivian's sewing skills grant her full entry into this enthusiastic if makeshift enterprise, especially when the chic and gifted British actor Edna Parker Watson and her handsome young husband arrive. Their London home has been bombed to matchsticks, and they're in desperate need of sanctuary and work. Peg takes them in and makes them the stars of the theater's next production, City of Girls, a play Gilbert revels in creating, from song lyrics and costumes to opening-night reviews. Its improbable success changes everything for everyone involved, and not necessarily for the better.After barely surviving a scorching tabloid scandal?among the intriguing real-life characters Gilbert portrays is the infamous gossip columnist Walter Winchell?followed by wartime demands, Vivian comes into her own as a talented fashion entrepreneur. We learn about her many adventures in retrospect as Vivian, an octogenarian in 2010, vividly recounts her life of choice and independence with sly wit, piquant regrets, and hard-won wisdom. Vivian's confident candor about women's sexuality, including her own preference for sex free of emotional entanglements, is tonic and affirming; the surprising turn she takes to embrace love is deeply moving.Reading City of Girls is pure bliss, thanks to its spirited characters, crackling dialogue, rollicking yet affecting story lines, genuinely erotic scenes, and sexual intelligence, suspense, and incisive truths. Gilbert's beguiling blend of comedy and gravitas brings to mind other smart, funny, nimble, and vital novels about early- or mid-twentieth-century women swimming against the tide. Most take place in New York, and some also depict the theater or other creative endeavors as crucibles for social struggles: Fay Weldon's Worst Fears (1996); Bandbox by Thomas Mallon (2004); Marge Piercy's Sex Wars (2005); The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon (2014); Searching for Grace Kelly by Michael Callahan (2015); Careers for Women by Joanna Scott (2017); Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney (2017); Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan (2017); The Magnificent Esme Wells by Adrienne Sharp (2018); Memories of the Future by Siri Hustvedt (2019); and Park Avenue Summer by Ren�e Rosen...