The plot bristles with moral intent: Vivian’s fall, when it inevitably comes, is complete and damning and utterly gendered, its repercussions shadowing the rest of her life.

In fact, like Gilbert’s previous novel, A Signature of All Things, it’s so true to life in places – including real historical figures in the story – that it occasionally feels like pastiche.Įlizabeth Gilbert Photograph: ddp USA/REX Shutterstockīut Gilbert is nothing if not emotionally intuitive, and while City of Girls is unquestionably a sexy, glamorous romp, its similarities with vaudeville end there. This is a work of historical fiction, and Gilbert’s prose, while not immaculate, zings with the mood of the era. If this all sounds like something straight out of vaudeville, it is. She’s not slow to cast off the moral and emotional shackles of her strait-laced, buttoned-down upbringing, embarking on a series of affairs and acquiring for herself a very different sort of education from the one that her parents would have deemed appropriate. Worldly showgirl Celia Ray, streetwise leading man Anthony Roccella, grande dame Edna Parker Watson and her beautiful-but-dim actor husband Arthur, along with Hollywood wheeler-dealer Billy Buell, are like nothing and no one Vivian has ever encountered before. Sent to live at her bohemian Aunt Peg’s down-at-heel mid-town theatre, The Lily, Vivian falls headlong in lust with a colourful world that has little in common with her privileged Wasp upbringing.

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert