City of Girls

Prepare yourself to be sickened, perhaps, at the love I'm about to dump all over this beautiful book.

At first, a bit of a caveat. Books you read on vacation are almost always going to feel better than ones you read at home. And, here's where I read this book.

(I didn't read it out there on the paddleboard, but I did read it between paddles on the shore of this incredible lake.) 

The setting matters. Not just the setting of the book, but your setting and frame of mind when you're reading it. That said, I'm confident I could read this book anywhere and would have just as quickly fallen in love.

Where do I start with my unbridled adulation?

I'll start by saying I wasn't sure this book would live up to the hype. Because Elizabeth Gilbert it and because of the success of Eat, Pray, Love, it was going to get some attention. I read a couple previews and was attracted to the premise - life in the 1940s in New York City, surrounded by sex, booze and showgirls. Then, I heard Gilbert on the Armchair Expert podcast (which you should be listening to, by the way). The way she talked about this book and the strong female characters had me absolutely hooked. I haven't bought a book in quite awhile, but the number of "holds" on this book at the library was going to make the wait unbearable. So I went to the bookstore on my birthday and bought it, then waited for my lake vacation to crack it open.

Then, I fell in love.

This book tells the story of a young woman named Vivian who flunks out of Vassar and is sent to live with her aunt in New York City. The aunt runs a ragtag theater, struggling to survive. Vivian is thrust into a world of show business, showgirls, feathers and sex, completely different from everything she knew before. She quickly gets lost in the glamour of it all and Gilbert takes you right down with her.

It's told as a letter Vivian is writing to a woman named Angela. You know immediately that Vivian had a relationship with Angela's father, but you don't know until almost the end who that man is and why he mattered so much in Vivian's life. It's a wonderful narrative technique that added a layer of mystery underneath an otherwise uncomplicated story. (I won't give away the twist, but I will tell you this: it's deeply satisfied when it's revealed). You see Vivian's life all the way through, as she confronts the mistakes she's made, the family she's left behind and the ultimate conclusion that leads her to happiness.

The premise of the book is interesting enough. The characters are rich, the plot is compelling. The pages fly by. But, that's not what makes this my favorite book of 2019 so far (maybe it's a tie for #1. It's definitely up there.) What made me fall in love is the way she writes about women that sold me and had me weeping as I read the last page.

Vivian is a woman who loves sex. She loves men. She chases desire, often at the expense of others. And, she doesn't apologize for it. "The only two things I've ever been good at in this world are sex and sewing," she says. As soon as she stops apologizing for that - and for the mistakes she makes because of that desire - she truly begins to live.

Damn, y'all. 

That's powerful stuff. 

It's reminiscent of two of my other favorite books in recent years - Daisy Jones & the Six and Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Each are about strong, unapologetic women. Each are told through a unique narrative. If you like any of the three, you'd like them all.

I loved this book. I devoured this book. I'm evangelizing for this book. If you can read it by a beautiful mountain lake, even better...