*1940s newsboy voice* New York City babay!!!
a review of City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
Ah, the famous City of Girls, where the trash smells like Santal 33 and city hall meetings are just people apologizing for no reason. It’s not a real place but if it were it would be perfect for a long weekend with loved ones or with shallow acquaintances for your cousin’s Bridesmaids themed bachelorette party (get it? It’s meta! She says).
Gilbert’s City of Girls disappointingly takes place in *1940s newsboy voice* New York City baby! It’s written in How I Met Your Mother format; the narrator, Vivian, intermittently addresses this figure-in-the-mist named Angela (not Merkel, unfortch). Viv is a Vassar dropout who moves to NYC and ~sees life anew~ in a manner that is very familiar for anyone who follows people from their high school on instagram. It’s the 1940s and no one has phones to look at yet, so they’re constantly swilling martinis and singing along to songs called “Let Me Knit Your Booties, Baby.” If you’ve ever wondered what the second world war looks like through the eyes of a privileged nincompoop, Viv’s your gal. She is a well-meaning but frivolous narrator who blunders through life in a way that makes you think: lol why? But that’s the point, after all. Young people, particularly young women, are so often treated like idiots on a stick. It is really easy to be an idiot on a stick when you don’t know what the fuck you are doing.
(No spoilies because the only person who reads these is Conley and she hasn’t read the book yet.)
Good ol Viv is a khaki wacky who flips her wig and goofs up in a strictly from dixie fashion. She is from Clinton, NY, where I visited Hamilton College and they gave me a free black and white cookie<3, and has never met an Italian American person before. We’ve all been there!
The route towards adulthood is a slip-and-slide set up on a bald rock face, and that’s if you’re lucky. I know this from experience. Junior year of high school, I was wearing American Apparel at one of my first cool parties (only entered sophomore year and it took me a sec to curate my personal brand) when I saw the guy I liked making out with someone else. Because I was young and insecure and had one light beer, I was like “I’m going to react the most bonkers way possible to these stimuli,” which meant talking everyone’s ear off about the injustice we had collectively witnessed. Unlike Viv, I tilt towards annoying rather than cruel--which is a blessing, I think. Everyone in the vicinity was like: “I don’t like your response to the stimuli and I don’t care about the stimuli” and I alienated everyone close to me (except for Conley who was grounded and did not attend the party) for ~2 weeks because that is the lifespan of an incident in high school.
WomanScientist.jpeg or me finding out the most bonkers way possible to respond to simuli.
The best part about City of Girls is that we get to see Viv grow into a real person, and make more accurate judgements. WWII happens and she is celibate for no reason except there aren’t any dudes, and this experience knocks some sense into her. It’s a long, charming story about a girl who becomes less insufferable over time and loves NYC, baby! It is cringeworthy like all women’s literature is fated to be and has a pink feather on the cover. I bought it in a fit of desperate escapism in May because I knew lifestyle blogger Lee From America loved it so I figured it would be...a light read (sorry if that’s mean). Also because People magazine calls it “Vibrant, sexy and wise,” which is like… I trust them on “sexy,” but who died and made People mag become the arbiter of what’s wise. Anyways, 2.5 pink feather boas for this shipdiddly doodad of a book!!!