City of Girls â Elizabeth Gilbert
After a somewhat rocky start, Gilbert pulls this one out of the fire with beautifully developed, complex characters.
The book begins as the author/narrator sets out, at the age of 89, to send a âletterâ (?) to answer the question of a young woman she barely knows. This reviewer is not fond of âframedâ stories and generally gets very impatient with the style, but this one quickly settles down, then ultimately reveals the utterly necessary reason for the framework setup near the end of the book.
It all begins in 1940, when 19-year-old Vivian Morris is invited to leave Vassar and goes to New York City, where she stays with her aunt in a run-down, struggling neighborhood theater. An entirely new world opens up for her, and she leaps gleefully into the hard-partying life of a pretty young woman in The Big City.
Yet this is not a coming-of-age tale. It is more a coming-of-character tale, in which Vivian makes some whopper mistakes, ranging from trivial to life-altering, narrowly escapes matrimony, survives World War II, figures out who she wants to be, what she has to cling to, and what she has to give up in order to get there. And it's all set against the lush, intense background of New York over three decades.
This is a meaty read with intriguing characters and a mystery that isn't really a mystery until it's revealed, at which point the reader realizes the point of it all.
Highly recommended.
After a somewhat rocky start, Gilbert pulls this one out of the fire with beautifully developed, complex characters.
The book begins as the author/narrator sets out, at the age of 89, to send a âletterâ (?) to answer the question of a young woman she barely knows. This reviewer is not fond of âframedâ stories and generally gets very impatient with the style, but this one quickly settles down, then ultimately reveals the utterly necessary reason for the framework setup near the end of the book.
It all begins in 1940, when 19-year-old Vivian Morris is invited to leave Vassar and goes to New York City, where she stays with her aunt in a run-down, struggling neighborhood theater. An entirely new world opens up for her, and she leaps gleefully into the hard-partying life of a pretty young woman in The Big City.
Yet this is not a coming-of-age tale. It is more a coming-of-character tale, in which Vivian makes some whopper mistakes, ranging from trivial to life-altering, narrowly escapes matrimony, survives World War II, figures out who she wants to be, what she has to cling to, and what she has to give up in order to get there. And it's all set against the lush, intense background of New York over three decades.
This is a meaty read with intriguing characters and a mystery that isn't really a mystery until it's revealed, at which point the reader realizes the point of it all.
Highly recommended.
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