Vivian Morris, the narrator of City of Girls, is bundled off to Manhattan by her parents in the spring of 1940. Vivian is 19 and without any discernible plans for the future. The listless college dropout is instructed to stay with her Aunt Peg who owns the grand but crumbling Lily Playhouse in New York City. Aunt Peg’s theatre company is a whole new universe.
Vivian, “a girl so freshly hatched that there is yolk in her hair”, is thrilled to hang out with a bunch of sexy showgirls, dancers, playboys, eccentric actors, and writers. She puts her formidable sewing skills to good use by taking on the challenge of designing costumes for the impoverished company’s productions. Wild nights and drunken dancing follow, love and lust are Vivian’s for the taking in the city.
Striking details
Told from the perspective of an aged Vivian, Elizabeth Gilbert’s new novel is both a coming-of-age tale and a glorious, if occasionally wistful, remembrance of things past. Gilbert, a skilled storyteller who endeared herself to readers with her bestselling novels, Eat Pray Love and The Signature of All Things, paints an animated portrait of Vivian’s life in 1940s’ New York before America “inevitably did enter the War”.
Embellished with striking details, all things come alive — the beautiful costumes Vivian sews; her shopping expeditions to Orchard Street and Ninth Avenue; the flurry of rehearsals for the productions at the Lily; Vivian’s nights
out with Celia, the stunning showgirl who looked like “an angel who had fallen to earth”; Vivian’s encounters with handsome men and drunken rogues; her sexual awakening; her chase of pleasure and excitement, “sailing through the neon and shadows of New York City, in a nonstop search for action.”
Despite its precariousness, life at the Lily Playhouse has a certain shabby chic. The glamour quotient is elevated to stratospheric levels with the sudden arrival of Edna and Arthur Watson, guests of Aunt Peg, whose London home has been destroyed by German bombs.
With Edna, Vivian encounters “true glamour” for the first time. Until then, she had taken New York City showgirls and their “spangled radiance” to be the height of glamour. The stylish and incredibly talented Edna makes Vivian realise that everything and everyone she had been admiring so far is “gaudy and glitzy” com
Gilbert fleshes out her characters deftly. Memorable characters abound: Vivian’s eccentric and generous aunt Peg; Olive, who steers both Peg’s life and the Lily’s floundering ship, valiantly trying to inject some method into the general madness; flaky charmer Billy, Peg’s ex-husband and good friend; impeccably dressed acting legend Edna; troubled Frank who is scarred for life by memories of the War.
Female friendship
The bonds the characters share are distinctly drawn. Every relationship — between friends, former spouses, lovers, co-actors, siblings — has an identity of its own.
Gilbert avoids clichéd definitions of love, lust, hate, envy and resentment, sparking moments of genuine chemistry among the characters and springing some delicious surprises on the reader. There are also welcome moments of hilarity such as the scene in which Vivian loses her virginity with a little help from her show-girl friends.
Female friendships like the ones between Olive and Aunt Peg, Vivian and Celia, Vivian and Marjorie, form vital strands of the narrative. Vivian, who starts out believing she is only good at two things — “sex and sewing” — is eventually rewarded with the realisation that she is very good at being a friend and that over the years, she has been a “good friend to a great many women.”
City of Girls is an engaging tale, told with verve and flair. Incisive insights about female desire surface as the plot breezes ahead, a woman’s quest for pleasure and sexual autonomy gets the space it deserves, and the reader is offered glimpses of the shape of sexual politics in pre #metoo times.
Gilbert’s canvas is vast, spanning many decades, many lives. New York City too takes on a life of its own, playing a pivotal role in the story. A strong sense of place anchors Vivian’s journey across the years, giving it an authentic feel.
Though hindsight adds gravitas to the tale’s telling, the aged Vivian’s commentary on events often gets in the way of the story’s immediacy. Like an annoying voiceover in an otherwise interesting film, this device sticks out, calling attention to itself instead of letting the story flow smoothly.
The writer is the author of A Happy Place And Other Stories.
City of Girls; Elizabeth Gilbert, Bloomsbury Publishing, ₹599
