Probably in keeping with the rest of the reading world, I chiefly associate Elizabeth Gilbert with her memoir Eat, Pray, Love. So I was intrigued when I spotted her novel City of Girls in a local “book fridge.”*

“OK, what’s it about?” you cry. Welp, I would call it recent historical fiction, of the kind that focuses on a particular phase of a character’s story then follows them through the rest of their life, but always tying the rest back to that first phase or experience.

In this case the main character is Vivian Morris, a young lady whose chief talents are dressmaking and an appetite for life, who arrives in New York city at age 19, in the year 1940. She is going to live with her Aunt Peg, who runs a revue theatre (the Lily Playhouse) in midtown Manhattan.

In 1940, the era of burlesque, vaudeville, and showgirls was on the wane but not yet gone (Ziegfeld’s Follies had a successful rerun in 1943-4.) It’s definitely hanging on at the Lily, where Vivian gets swept into what she sees as glamour and a swinging nightlife with the showgirls, a course that eventually ‘gangs awry.’

It’s the going awry that ends shaping a significant part of her life, although that will not become clear for many years later. In the meantime, Vivian and the Lily crew spend the war entertaining the workers and keeping up morale in the naval dockyards, before she and a friend open what becomes a highly successful bridal business in postwar New York.

There’s more to it, but to say more would be a spoiler. Overall, I enjoyed City of Girls, which was (and is) fun, light, but with enough gravitas to keep me reading.  I also loved Vivian’s “voice” from the outset. She is insouciant, and light of heart and spirit throughout.

Ms Gilbert has a gift for capturing relationship and personalities, and I particularly liked Vivian’s friendships with Marjorie Lowetsky, who becomes her business partner; and also with Frank Grecco, who has served with her brother in the navy (Pacific theatre), during the war. The other major relationship, of course, is Vivian’s love for New York city. The sense of place in City of Girls is very strong, always a plus for me.

In among the insouciance and Vivian’s swathe through New York and life, there are some great insights into human nature. One that struck a particular chord was when Frank, who has become a policeman in civilian life, observes to Vivian that:

“The world ain’t straight. You grow up thinking things are a certain way. You think there are rules. You think there’s a way that things have to be. You try to live straight. But the world doesn’t care about your rules or what you believe. The world ain’t straight, Vivian. Never will be.”

‘The world ain’t straight’  — true dat, I thought, on reading it. I felt, too, that the observation illuminates the heart of the book, which  is well worth reading, especially if you like novels like Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House, or The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.

I read a trade paperback edition, 466 pp, published 2019 by Bloomsbury Publishing, acquired (as aforementioned) from a local book exchange.

*In this case it's not a fridge but a cupboard on the exterior wall of a local community hall--
but actual fridges, with books in them, appeared around Christchurch during the earthquake years,
and for me at least (but I believe other Christchurch folk) the term has stuck. :D