City of Girls

 

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert 496 pages

 

Before author Elzabeth Gilbert took the literary world by storm with her mega-hit, “Eat Pray Love,” she penned a most charming and fictional tale of a group of eccentric theater people who lived and worked at the Lily Playhouse. The story takes place in the 1940s.

 

When the narrator of the story, Vivian Morris, was nineteen, she flunked out of Vassar. Her parents didn’t know what to do with her. So, they sent her to live with her Aunt Peg in Manhattan. Aunt Peg owned the Lily, which put on shows twice a day. They weren’t particularly good, but the local audience loved them and bought tickets. I would call it off-off-off-off Broadway.

 

Gilbert uses the epistolary structure to tell this story. Vivian, now eighty-nine years old, is answering a letter to the daughter of a friend after her mother passes, wanting to know what Vivian was to her father. That’s a little complicated, but Gilbert pulls it off.

 

The Lily was as much a character as any of the humans. It was rambling. It was rundown. It was magical. And the people who lived there were much the same. Olive was the general manager and Peg’s best friend. They served together during World War I. Also inhabiting the theater are the actors, the showgirls, the playwright and the composer. Vivian finds her place in this cast as a costume designer; her grandmother had taught her to sew, and she was excellent at it.

 

Vivian becomes BFFs with Celia, one of the showgirls. Together, they nightly paint the town. Every night. Stumbling through the doors in the wee hours of the morning, smelling of booze and sex. Those two slept with a LOT of men. Warning: there are a couple of scenes that are X-rated.

 

During one of those nights on the town, Vivian makes a horrible mistake and is banished back to her hometown and life with her parents in upstate New York. But it is just foreshadowing for what it so come---the soldier who served on the same battleship as her late brother becoming her best friend after she returns to Manhattan.

 

Gilberts writes about Manhattan as if she too had lived in the 1940s---one of my favorite time periods. It was a helluva time and a helluva town. I wish I could visit, but then again, I have through Gilbert’s words.

 

I loved these characters and this time. And to be honest, I miss them. City of Girls received 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.