City Girls

An Instant New York Times Best Seller! Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love.

The story follows 19-year-old Vivian Morris, who in 1940 has just been kicked out of Vassar College due to her lackluster freshman-year performance. Her affluent parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant, crumbling midtown theater called the Lily Playhouse. There, Vivian is introduced to an entire cosmos of unconventional and charismatic characters, from the fun-chasing showgirls to a sexy male actor, a grand-dame actress, a lady-killer writer, and a no-nonsense stage manager.

However, when Vivian makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal, it turns her new world upside down in ways that will take her years to fully understand. Ultimately, though, it leads her to a new understanding of the kind of life she craves - and the freedom it takes to pursue it. It will also lead to the love of her life, a love that stands out from all the rest.

Now 89 years old and telling her story at last, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life - and the gusto and autonomy with which she approached it. "At some point in a woman's life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time", she muses. "After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is."

Described as "a spellbinding novel about love, freedom, and finding your own happiness" (PopSugar), and "intimate and richly sensual, razzle-dazzle with a hint of danger" (USA Today), City of Girls is a love story like no other. Pairing well "with a cocktail...or two" (TheSkimm), the novel's powerful wisdom about human desire and connection is sure to captivate readers.

As the number-one best-selling author of Eat Pray Love and The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert has once again delivered a delicious novel of glamour, sex, and adventure, about a young woman discovering that you don't have to be a good girl to be a good person. Life, she reminds us, is both fleeting and dangerous, and there is no point in denying yourself pleasure or being anything other than what you are.

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