Toronto Star

Writing latest book rescued author of Eat, Pray, Love

- MOIRA MACDONALD THE SEATTLE TIMES

“It saved me,” says author Elizabeth Gilbert, best known for the bestsellin­g 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love.

She’s walking down a New York street during an animated telephone interview last week, talking about her latest novel. City of Girls is set in a carelessly glamorous 1940s Manhattan world of showgirls, musicals, ratty theatre seats, flirty rayon dresses and youthful exuberance — it’s a book whose very lightheart­edness pulled her out of deep personal grief. Early last year, Gilbert’s romantic partner and longtime best friend, Rayya Elias, died of cancer at the age of 57.

You might expect someone famous for exploring her own life through memoir to process the aftermath of loss by writing nonfiction — and it’s what Gilbert herself expected.

She had begun research on City of Girls before Elias’ illness, but after the diagnosis “couldn’t imagine ever caring about this novel again.” The problems of New York City showgirls seemed trivial, and Gilbert fully expected to never resume work on the book.

Then, shortly after Elias’ death, Gilbert felt compelled to dive back into City of Girls — “I felt like I got a message from the mother ship saying that the best thing I could possibly do was write this book. I’d been in so much pain, so much grief, it was as if the cosmic scale needed to be righted by going in the exact opposite direction.”

It was life imitating art, with Gilbert using fiction the way her character Aunt Peg — a director of cheerfully tatty musicals — uses theatre. “People are suffering, life is hard, let’s put on a show. That was very much the spirit with which I approached the book.”

Gilbert began exploring ideas for the book about six years ago. She was intrigued by the idea of centring a novel on a young female character — Peg’s 19year-old niece Vivian — who is sexually free, but whose life isn’t destroyed by those choices. “So many stories of women’s desire end with the ruination of the woman,” said Gilbert.

The 1940s setting came to her after reading a collection of essays by Alexander Woollcott, in which he profiled a series of prominent actresses. The period had “an impossible glamour,” said Gilbert, sending her off on a deep dive into authors writing about that time: John O’Hara, Mary McCarthy, Maeve Brennan. And she researched numerous letters from the era — “that’s the only way you can get people’s actual voice.”

Now that City of Girls is finished and out in the world, Gilbert isn’t sure what she’ll write next; she tends to alternate between fiction (the 2013 novel The Signature of All Things) and nonfiction (her latest was 2015’s self-help volume Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear). But she’s hoping the upbeat spirit of City of Girls will make its way to the reader.

“It was a joy to research, and a joy to create,” she said.

“Writing it made me feel a lot better; maybe reading it will make you feel better.”

 ??  ?? Elizabeth Gilbert's new book, City of
Girls, is a period novel set in the glamorous 1940s Manhattan world of showgirls and youthful exuberance.
Elizabeth Gilbert's new book, City of Girls, is a period novel set in the glamorous 1940s Manhattan world of showgirls and youthful exuberance.

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