BOOK OF THE MONTH

City of Girls

By Elizabeth Gilbert Penguin Random House

Regardless of whether you loved or loathed Elizabeth Gibert’s bestselling memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, it’s impossible not to get swept away by her new novel, City of Girls. Set in Manhattan in the 1940s, the lead character, Vivian Morris, is a young woman who ends up working for her aunt in a fabulous yet seedy Midtown theatre as a seamstress, after she was thrown out of college. There she’s introduced to a cosmos of colourful and charismatic characters, who show her a world like nothing she has experienced before. But of course there are lessons to learn along the way – and not particularly easy ones at that. Ultimately, though, they lead her to a new understanding of the kind of life she craves, and the kind of freedom it takes to pursue it. “At some point in a woman’s life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time. After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is,” she muses.