Prep for City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

Thanks to Priscilla for this post!

There is a lot of information on the internet regarding the author and the book.  Here are a few good interviews on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrjjSG5YlGE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWGneg-6VYg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhYLygM9bm8

Here are some examples of the fashions described in the book:

http://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2020/02/city-of-girls-by-elizabeth-gilbert.html

https://www.pinterest.com/harmonicadesign/city-of-girls-envisioned/

https://thevoiceoffashion.com/intersections/shelf-life/stitching-the-past-into-the-future-4151

Discussion questions:

 1. What were your general feelings on the book as a whole?  What is your overall rating of this book?

 

2. How did you like reading the book in a letter format, with the author speaking to Angela? How did it change the feeling of the book? 

 

3. A tag line for the book is “You don’t have to be a good girl to be a good person.” What do you think of that idea and how it relates to the characters in the story? And, specifically to Vivian?

 

4. What was your reaction to Vivian’s unfaithful night with Arthur and Celia? Do you think all three of the characters “got what they deserved?”

 

5. What role did New York City play in this book? How might it have been different if it was set in another city instead?

 

6. Discuss how WWII affected those remaining in the US and the role it played in both Vivian’s life and the story’s narrative.

 

7. A theme in the novel is loving people despite their undesirable habits. How was this beneficial for the characters to be giving and receiving of that kind of love?

 

8. Unknown to each other, Frank and Vivian were both haunted by that one moment in a car when they were young. What did you think of Frank showing up in Vivian’s life and of their relationship?

9. Did you like Vivian’s demeanor and confidence throughout the book? Could you relate to her?

10. Do you think this book should be turned into a film?  Which famous actors/actresses would you cast to play the main characters?

Story Summary:

In Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2019 historical fiction novel, City of Girls, our narrator is 89-year-old Vivian Morris. In the opening pages, we learn that Vivian is writing to another woman named Angela. Vivian is attempting to answer Angela’s question about who Vivian was to her late father.

Vivian begins her letter in response by immersing us in her youth, starting when she moves to New York City at the age of 19 in 1940. Having been kicked out of college, Vivian lives with her bohemian Aunt Peg, who owns a vaudeville-style theater in Midtown Manhattan called the Lily Playhouse with her business and romantic partner, Olive. Vivian enjoys the glamorous life of the showgirls she befriends, in particular her roommate Celia, and experiences nights of excess, gluttony, and sexual pleasure. By day, she crafts beautiful costumes for the Lily using material from a fabric emporium where she strikes up a friendship with Marjorie, the quirky daughter of the store’s owners. As the Second World War begins to break through Vivian’s sheltered life, Edna Parker Watson, an English stage actress and friend of Aunt Peg and Olive, becomes stranded in New York as England gets into the war. Aunt Peg puts on a show to feature Edna with the help of Billy, her husband who lives in L.A. The show is a critical and commercial success, and the cast and crew narrowly survives Billy’s work-hard, play-hard mentality.

One night, tensions between Edna and her husband Arthur erupt, and Vivian is caught in a threesome with Arthur and Celia. Olive manages to keep Vivian’s name out of the press coverage of the scandal, but the damage is done. Edna scolds Vivian, telling her she isn’t an interesting woman, and Vivian flees the city, getting a ride home with her responsible Navy recruit older brother, Walter, and a fellow solider who has a car available. On the way home, Walter lectures Vivian, and the unnamed solder calls her a “dirty little whore,” a remark that fills Vivian with shame and self-hatred as she lives at home with her parents in a state of depression. Vivian narrowly misses a marriage to Jim Larsen, an employee at her father’s company, because Jim enlists in the military after the Pearl Harbor attacks.

Vivian senses that she’s dodged a bullet and a life of unhappiness with Jim. When Aunt Peg drives up to her parents’ house and asks Vivian to return to the city, Vivian eagerly hears her out. Aunt Peg’s been commissioned to put on shows at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and needs a costume designer. Vivian agrees and, with delight, moves back to the Lily. Life has changed, with Edna on Broadway, Celia gone, and Billy elsewhere. Vivian dives headfirst into the challenge of creating costumes despite war shortages. Vivian is distraught when she finds out Walter died on a ship in the Pacific.

After the war, Vivian and Marjorie purchase a house and set up a bridal gown boutique. Marjorie has a son who Vivian helps to raise, and Vivian finds sexual satisfaction in multiple male partners, though never a lasting relationship. When the Brooklyn Navy Yard is set to be formally closed down, Aunt Peg is asked to put on one last show. Since Peg is too weak from illness, Vivian agrees to take on the project. After the performance, a scarred police officer comes up to her and makes a stunning confession: he was the soldier who drove her home and called her a “dirty little whore.” The man’s name is Frank, and though he tries to apologize and apologize for the regretful words that have haunted him since, Vivian shuts him down and leaves. Seeking sympathy from Aunt Peg, Vivian is surprised when Peg expresses disappointment in her. Olive tells Vivian she needs to stand in the “field of honor” and take the high ground. After much deliberation, Vivian reaches out to Frank. Together, they strike up an unusual friendship that borders on a platonic romance. Since Frank’s PTSD makes him uncomfortable inside, they walk through the city during long nights. Vivian helps him process some of his trauma. He eventually introduces her to his daughter, Angela, the woman to whom Vivian is writing. Vivian designs Angela’s wedding gown. Not long after, Frank dies. When Angela writes to Vivian, it’s to tell her that her mother has passed away and that she was always curious about Vivian’s close relationship with Frank. In closing, Vivian offers her friendship to Angela, looking back on her long and mostly happy life with extraordinary women.

Author bio:

Elizabeth Gilbert was born in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1969, and grew up on a small family Christmas tree farm. She attended New York University, where she studied political science by day and worked on her short stories by night. After college, she spent several years traveling around the country, working in bars, diners and ranches, collecting experiences to transform into fiction.

These explorations eventually formed the basis of her first book – a short story collection called PILGRIMS, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award, and which moved Annie Proulx to call her “a young writer of incandescent talent”.

During these early years in New York, she also worked as a journalist for such publications as Spin, GQ and The New York Times Magazine. She was a three-time finalist for The National Magazine Award, and an article she wrote in GQ about her experiences bartending on the Lower East Side eventually became the basis for the movie COYOTE UGLY.

In 2000, Elizabeth published her first novel, STERN MEN (a story of brutal territory wars between two remote fishing islands off the coast of Maine) which was a New York Times Notable Book. In 2002, Elizabeth published THE LAST AMERICAN MAN – the true story of the modern day woodsman Eustace Conway. This book, her first work of non-fiction, was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Elizabeth is best known, however for her 2006 memoir EAT PRAY LOVE, which chronicled her journey alone around the world, looking for solace after a difficult divorce. The book was an international bestseller, translated into over thirty languages, with over 12 million copies sold worldwide. In 2010, EAT PRAY LOVE was made into a film starring Julia Roberts. The book became so popular that Time Magazine named Elizabeth as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

In 2010, Elizabeth published a follow-up to EAT PRAY LOVE called COMMITTED—a memoir which explored her ambivalent feelings about the institution of marriage. The book immediately became a #1 New York Times Bestseller, and was also received with warm critical praise. As Newsweek wrote, COMMITTED “retains plenty of Gilbert’s comic ruefulness and wide-eyed wonder”, and NPR called the book “a rich brew of newfound insight and wisdom.”

Her 2013 novel THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS is a sprawling tale of 19th century botanical exploration. O Magazine named it “the novel of a lifetime”, and the Wall Street Journal called it “the most ambitious and purely-imagined work of (Gilbert’s) twenty-year career.” THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS was a New York Times Bestseller, and Janet Maslin called it “engrossing…vibrant and hot-blooded.” The novel was named a Best Book of 2013 by The New York Times, O Magazine, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and The New Yorker.”

In 2015, she published BIG MAGIC: CREATIVE LIVING BEYOND FEAR—a book that encapsulates the joyful spirit of adventure and permission that Elizabeth has always brought to her work and to her life.

Her latest novel is CITY OF GIRLS — a rollicking, sexy tale of the New York City theater world during the 1940s. It will be published in June of 2019.

Elizabeth divides her time between New York City, rural New Jersey, and everywhere else.