City of Girls

470 pages

Published Jan. 1, 2019 by Riverhead Books.

ISBN:
978-1-59463-473-4
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OCLC Number:
1089884084

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3 stars (3 reviews)

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 …

1 edition

Review of 'City of Girls' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Tough book to rate, here. When it drags, it really drags, but when it moves, it zips. Sometimes the frame story premise of being a written memoir is almost obnoxiously intrusive, other times it melds with the story so fluidly that you can't image it told any other way.

I liked it, though. It's all about a privileged, rich, sheltered white girl in the world's biggest city on the cusp of war, and the rebuilding after, but it doesn't revel in either the privilege, the judgment, or the inevitable comeuppance: It's acknowledged, it's accepted for what it was, and it moves on. It acknowledges a lot of other lives, and it moves on. That kind of slice of life gave it extra power for me.

Whether you love it, you hate it, or you tolerate is depends entirely on how listening to a stranger tell you their life story for …

avatar for Susanna

rated it

2 stars