‘City of Girls’ is a perfect summer novel
Elizabeth Gilbert’s sparkling new “City of Girls” (Riverhead Books, 480 pp., ★★★1⁄2 out of four) is the perfect summer novel. 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.
In 1940 at age 19, Vivian Morris has flunked out of Vassar College. Her wealthy, disappointed parents throw up their hands and send her to live with her flamboyant Aunt Peg, who operates a run-down louche theater specializing in showgirls and formula entertainment for a working-class audience who badly needs laughter and love stories in war-time Manhattan. As Peg puts it, “I’d rather put on a good leg show than bad Shakespeare.”
Vivian instantly embraces the show-business family of the Lily Playhouse, who include Peg’s lover and stage manager, Olive; Peg’s ex-husband Billy, a charmer and a writer; and Edna, the aging but brilliant British actress whose exile provides all of them with their first critical and commercial hit — “City of Girls.” Luckily, Vivian’s genius is for sewing and fashion, and she plunges in to take charge of all the costumes, scavenging used fabrics and notions from Lowtsky’s in Hell’s Kitchen.
The real action, however, occurs offstage. Vivian is beautiful, knows it, and hungers for experience of all kinds. Her sexual awakening kicks off with a hilarious scene organized by her showgirl friends, and only picks up speed after that. Trailing boyfriends in their wake, Vivian and her posse carouse through Toot Shor’s, El Morocco and the Stork Club. “The rule seemed to be: dance until you collapse, and then keep dancing for a little bit longer after that.” They down cocktails and get into trouble, then get back into their costumes and do it all again the next night. Gilbert is sharply wonderful in these scenes where women take pleasure without shame, reveling in “the delicious blinding yearnings of the young.”
It can’t last, of course. A stinging, dire mistake on Vivian’s part brings real pain to a beloved close friend and ally, and the repercussions are shockingly final. The escalation of deployment begins to take its toll on men and their families. Vivian is unceremoniously kicked out of the “City of Girls” and sent back to her cold, unsympathetic parents.
After spending nearly 300 pages on one year, the novel now picks up speed, covering years to come in Vivian’s life where there are fewer sequins, more regrets. Some readers might find these later sections less entrancing than the madcap first half. Yet as the decades pass and Vivian experiences love and loss, her story deepens in unexpected ways, as does her understanding of how that formative year shaped her life.
Whether in her unconventional household or her unconventional relationships, this character never ceases to hold our interest. “City of Girls” rewards Elizabeth Gilbert’s many devoted fans with a novel that provokes delight as well as thought.