CITY OF GIRLS by Elizabeth Gilbert

Vivian Morris is 89 years old and telling her story to Angela, who has written to Vivian to find out about Vivian’s relationship with Angela’s father.  Four hundred or so pages later, we find out who he is, and Vivian’s story loses steam.  Until that point, though, her story is pretty animated.  She is banished from her parents’ home, after flunking out of Vassar in her freshman year, and sent to live with her Aunt Peg in Manhattan.  Aunt Peg runs a small, ramshackle theatre company, complete with showgirls, and Vivian soon puts to good use her excellent seamstress skills as the costume designer.  She also launches herself headlong into a lifestyle of partying that she surely cannot sustain indefinitely.  She eventually makes a stupid mistake in her choice of sex partners, and her world comes crashing down.  Vivian may not be a poster child for sexual liberation, but she does prove that a whole bunch of one-night stands does not make her a bad person.  I love this theme in the book that a woman with a hefty sexual appetite can chart an atypical course through life and still garner our admiration and sympathy.  As Angela’s father says late in the book, “The world ain’t straight,” and he’s not talking about sexual orientation.  He’s talking about how our path through life meanders in unexpected directions.  Ultimately, Vivian has to learn the hard way how to forgive herself, as well as those who have judged her too harshly and flung some very hurtful insults her way.