Life has changed, with Edna on Broadway, Celia gone, and Billy elsewhere. Vivian agrees and, with delight, moves back to the Lily. Aunt Peg’s been commissioned to put on shows at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and needs a costume designer.
When Aunt Peg drives up to her parents’ house and asks Vivian to return to the city, Vivian eagerly hears her out. Vivian senses that she’s dodged a bullet and a life of unhappiness with Jim. Vivian narrowly misses a marriage to Jim Larsen, an employee at her father’s company, because Jim enlists in the military after the Pearl Harbor attacks. On the way home, Walter lectures Vivian, and the unnamed solder calls her a “dirty little whore,” a remark that fills Vivian with shame and self-hatred as she lives at home with her parents in a state of depression. Edna scolds Vivian, telling her she isn’t an interesting woman, and Vivian flees the city, getting a ride home with her responsible Navy recruit older brother, Walter, and a fellow solider who has a car available. Olive manages to keep Vivian’s name out of the press coverage of the scandal, but the damage is done. One night, tensions between Edna and her husband Arthur erupt, and Vivian is caught in a threesome with Arthur and Celia. By signing up you agree to our terms of use Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox. The show is a critical and commercial success, and the cast and crew narrowly survives Billy’s work-hard, play-hard mentality. Aunt Peg puts on a show to feature Edna with the help of Billy, her husband who lives in L.A. As the Second World War begins to break through Vivian’s sheltered life, Edna Parker Watson, an English stage actress and friend of Aunt Peg and Olive, becomes stranded in New York as England gets into the war. By day, she crafts beautiful costumes for the Lily using material from a fabric emporium where she strikes up a friendship with Marjorie, the quirky daughter of the store’s owners. Vivian enjoys the glamorous life of the showgirls she befriends, in particular her roommate Celia, and experiences nights of excess, gluttony, and sexual pleasure.
Having been kicked out of college, Vivian lives with her bohemian Aunt Peg, who owns a vaudeville-style theater in Midtown Manhattan called the Lily Playhouse with her business and romantic partner, Olive. Vivian begins her letter in response by immersing us in her youth, starting when she moves to New York City at the age of 19 in 1940. Vivian is attempting to answer Angela’s question about who Vivian was to her late father. In the opening pages, we learn that Vivian is writing to another woman named Angela. In Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2019 historical fiction novel, City of Girls, our narrator is 89-year-old Vivian Morris.
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