“City of Girls” review

City of Girls was a fun, enjoyable and captivating read. I disagree with the majority of the reviews I have read that classify it as an “easy” read, and as a book of little importance. I found this novel to have quite a strong final message instead.

Vivian Morris is a woman outside of her age. The book follows her in a time span of around 50 years, starting when she is 19 years old and she has just moved to New York City.  Vivian learns what it means to be financially and sentimentally independent in an era when every woman was born to eventually get married and make babies.  She becomes sexually inhibited and she learns how to listen and take care of her body and needs. She is able to cultivate her passion for sewing and make a great living out of it. She is unconventional; in the 1950s she moves in with her best friend, Marjorie and later on they decide to raise a child together. Her close family is composed of two lesbian aunts and her circle of girl friends. She is happy and satisfied without a stable man in her life. But Vivian will also be punished for her sexual freedom. There are certain passages of the book which are quite touching. When she is 20 years old she makes the mistake of having a threesome (which is still a taboo in 2020) with a woman and a married man, but only the women get the blame and are pushed away from society by other women. “Arthur Watson had completely gotten away with his misdeeds and lies. Celia had been banished by Peg, and I had been banished by Edna -- But Arthur had been allowed to carry on with his lovely life and his lovely wife.”

Shortly after this episode, she gets called a dirty little whore by a young man who doesn’t know her. After this, she will spend a year hiding, feeling a shame that can’t be cured and disgust towards herself. It is only with time that slowly she learns that there is nothing wrong with sleeping with a big number of men and feeling satisfied by sexual intercourse. “I could have spent the rest of my life trying to prove that I was a “good girl” -- but that would have been unfaithful to who I really was. I believed that I was a good person, if not a “good girl”. But my appetites were what they were. So I gave up on the idea of denying myself what I truly wanted.” There is another episode that highlights the shameful double standards that were in place in the mid 90s, and still are now. Marjorie gives birth to a “bastard” child, so she is treated with complete disrespect at the hospital. “She didn’t stop bleeding, and there was a concern they would lose her. They nicked the baby’s face with the scalpel during the cesarian, and very nearly took out his eye. Then Marjorie got an infection [...] I still maintain that this carelessness at the hospital was due to the fact that Nathan was what they called a “non marital child.” Even in this case, no one is punishing the absent father, the married man who didn’t want anything to do with his child and mistress after getting her pregnant. Instead, they are punishing a strong, brave woman and an innocent baby.  Sexism and double standards are current issues which millions of women have tried to combat over the years, and Vivian is not even fighting, she is simply existing by being true to herself, in the 20th century. She is a pioneer, she is a rebel, she is a role model. Involuntarily, she contradicts Edna, who had judged her to be a no one, someone who would never be special.  This book also covers strong themes such as psychological trauma due to war memories and loss of loved ones. It is truly a journey through an ever changing New York City and through a remarkable woman’s life. The only downside was the length of the book which could have been shortened a hundred pages, nevertheless it kept me hooked till the end.

“ When we are young, Angela, we may fall victim to the misconception that time will heal all wounds and that eventually everything will shake itself out. But as we get older, we learn the sad truth: some things can never be fixed. Some mistakes can never be put right -- not by the passage of time, and not by our most fervent wishes, either.”