Aunt Peg owns a theatre-a gloriously rundown theatre-that puts on light, slightly garish penny shows for working-class folk. It is decided that their wayward daughter will be sent to live with Aunt Peg in New York City. Her blue blood parents, busy tending horses and railing against Roosevelt (did I mention it’s 1940?), are at a loss. At 20 years old, the main character is doe-eyed, privileged, and recently expelled from Vassar College.

With an intensively researched America-at-midcentury backdrop and lyrical prose, Elizabeth Gilbert presents the life, loves, and lessons of Vivian Moss. Gilbert’s characters grieve (and recover from) the deaths of love affairs and loved ones, careers and reputations, and a time and place that will never exist again. Not about overcoming grief, but existing with it. I assumed Elizabeth would share details of her grief in a nonfiction format. While fiction, City of Girls is a beautiful guide about grief. Gilbert shared the change of her and Rayya’s relationship. She detailed the end of her first marriage, her personal reawakening, and the blossoming of her second marriage in Eat, Pray, Love. She had already begun her research, but Gilbert lost interest in writing such an “effervescent” novel after Elias’ diagnosis.Įlizabeth Gilbert has a history of laying herself bare. These are Heavy Topics worthy of Heavy Novels, yet, Gilbert’s latest goes down like a beach read.Įlizabeth Gilbert wrote City of Girls shortly after losing her best friend-turned-romantic-partner Rayya Elias to cancer, making the books’ levity more surprising.

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert is imbued with sex and death.