Elizabeth Gilbert has a huge bestseller out in City of Girls (Riverhead Books, $28.00). She already has won acclaim for the very popular, Eat, Pray, Love. City of Girls, however, contains perhaps the worst sex scene in the history of literature. No, not the writing, it’s the sex that’s dreadful.
Vivian Morris has dropped out of Vassar College in 1940 and has been sent by her stiff-necked parents to live with her aunt in New York. Aunt Peg runs a down-and-out Manhattan theatre known as the Lily Playhouse. There Vivian rooms with one of the showgirls who insists that Vivian needs to lose her virginity at the age of 19. The showgirls periodically service an old, wealthy veterinarian when his wife is gone for a weekend and he proceeds methodically to deflower our innocent heroine. Gilbert creates a scene as harrowing as a ghost house thriller.
Once that’s done Vivian wanders all over town nightly, picking up and getting picked up. A habit that continues throughout her lifetime. The story of the play put on by Aunt Peg, that Vivian helps produce by making costumes, is almost as exciting as a shootout, although it ends badly for Vivian.
Vivian gives normalcy one last attempt, getting engaged to a local boy after she moves back in with her parents. That relationship crashes with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the lad going off to war. Vivian returns to New York and gets a job at the Brooklyn Naval Yard. The descriptions of life during the war are wonderfully nostalgic, though Gilbert is wrong about the destruction of the U.S.S. Franklin.
Despite all of her cavorting, Vivian comes off as a wonderfully sympathetic character and the conclusion is truly heartwarming. City of Girls is a real draw–you–in, can’t–put–it–down read. And if you don’t get a little teary in the end, you must have missed something. Its chick–lit but a solid A, which I would recommend to all.
Steve E Clark as seen in the New York Times is Author of Justice Is for the Lonely and Justice Is for the Deserving, Kristen Kerry Novels Of Suspense. Steve is a 2017 NY Big Book Award winner and a 2018 Independent Book Awards recipient. You can purchase his books via https://steveclarkauthor.com/buy-the-book/ or request it at your local book store. Want to know more about Steve Clark, read more reviews or speak directly with Steve? Learn more about Steve at SteveClarkAuthor.com
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