Book Review : City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

By Murtaza Kuwarawala -
Title : City of Girls

Author : Elizabeth Gilbert

Genre : Romance

Okay, being honest here, but I guess I'm one of those readers who had DNFed Eat, Pray, Love by the same author that became a huge sensation. The reason being that I felt it kept dragging endlessly across the three cities she visited. Keeping all my notions aside, what attracted me to this book was the interesting premise that the author has come up with. Setting the book in 1940s of New York, the book deals with a theatre troupe who have finally hit a blockbuster around the time of World War.

The book is basically a letter written by our protagonist Vivian Morris to Angela describing her relationship with Angela's father. The story follows how a 19 year old Vivian who had to move to New York to her aunt Peg gets accustomed to the city and her theatre group. As the story progresses, we see Vivian dealing with a lot of interesting personalities as the theatre troupe is preparing for their biggest play 'City og Girls'. The story of Vivian deals with Friendship to Romance to Admiration and how she gets involved in a scandal which turns her entire life upside down.

From a larger perspective, this novel will make up an excellent Hollywood movie. With all the glitz and glamour that the 1940s brought into the world will look brilliant on the screen. The plot though quite unique in its own way is pretty well etched and the characters do bring up a kind of attachment to them that enables one to keep reading further till the end of the book. Each and every character are unique in their own ways and the author brilliantly brings them out to the readers.

With all the brilliance, the book does fall short in certain aspects. As the book starts, we are made to believe that the book talks about two main characters, Vivian and Angela's father but the book is highly focused on Vivian shunning the apparently second main character till you almost reach to an end. For someone who has been a fan of the show How I Met Your Mother, one does a feel a lot of vibe in the last quarter of the book which pretty much killed the entire essence of the novel.

So, will I recommend this book? The book is pretty much above average and did have an good start to it. If one might try to be a bit easygoing on the last quarter of the book, it would have been one of my favorites of this year. If I had to recommend something to the author, a bit of changes in timeline would have made the book pretty brilliant. 

My Ratings - 🌟🌟🌟 1/2 (3.5 out of 5 stars)

Plot in Few Words - Glamorous yet Disappointing End


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review : From Quetta to Delhi - A Partition Story by Reema Nanda

By Murtaza Kuwarawala -
Image
Never Judge a book by its cover nor by the name it possesses. The same case happened with me when I read the title of the name 'From Quetta to Delhi'. To be honest, I didn't take any pains to read the blurb because a story on partition is something I always wanted to read an action packed story on Partition. Sadly, the book wasn't what I had expected. So, what was the book about? What did made me read the book? Read further to know about it. Blurb: The invisible cost of the Partition of the Punjab in 1947 - besides the violence, loss of life and property - was that it destroyed the psychic equilibrium of the displaced population. This is the story of one such woman, Shakunt, who rebuilt her life but could never get over the trauma of losing her homes in Quetta and Jhang - not just the loss of a physical space but of the language, culture and ethos that it had embodied. A syncretic culture of multilingualism - Urdu, Persian and Punjabi - and of multiple identities o...
Read more

Travel : Trip of a Lifetime - II

By -
Image
The cruise.... Too excited to go on a cruise, we three musketeers reached the spot 4 hours before the departure time. Unfortunately, even the cruise was late that  night. Whatever might be the case, it was worth the wait. It was the first time in our life, we had dined, partied and slept (of course individually) on a ship. 24 hours later, we were heading towards the train station to our very next destination, “The Eternal City”, Rome. Roaming in Rome... Adventures started as soon as we reach Rome. We forgot to validate our ticket and were dead scared that we might get caught by the officials. Getting down at the railway station, we helped an old lady who was struggling to come out of the train. It took us 2 hours to reach our hotel even though we were roaming on the same street and finally arriving at a disastrous room. I regret not checking the reviews for this one. Of all the places, Rome turned out to be the cheapest and our little stint at Rome and Vatican took ...
Read more

Thoughts : Love Thy Neighbour

By -
Image
Ahhhh... Love Thy Neighbor .. Years back when I was doing my schooling, an extract of the classic novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was taught to us in our English Literature class. The extract was aptly titled "Love thy Neighbor  as it portrayed the way how Uncle Tom, the central character, lived his life spreading love everywhere. So, why am I talking about this subject right now? I believe that today technology has crippled us so much that we have forgotten what it means to be with real people than being virtual. In fact, the same even applies to me as I was unaware of my juniors living in the adjacent room of mine. A few weeks back, when I was returning back via Bangalore airport, I took some time to notice people around me. People were busy with themselves either working on their laptops or talking on phone, but there was this one small incident that caught my eye. A family of 3, father, mother and their son who must be of around 6 or 7, dining together. I...
Read more