Book review. "City of Girls" by Elizabeth Gilbert

This almost 500-page book forces me to dive deeply into my essence through the stories of the protagonist and main characters. In this book in my opinion Elizabeth shows her mastery not only in writing but in life's journey full of ups and downs, leading to maturity, inner evolution, and spiritual growth.

I began to read this book after a meeting with Elizabeth in Cologne. Beginning from maybe 100 page I felt that I was listening to Elizabeth and she was telling me her intimate story. Of course, this is not a story about the author's life, it's not "Eat. Pray. Love.", but her life influences on writing this book. To write such a book you do not only need to have ideas, imagination, and to make historical research to proofread all the facts. That is not enough. You need to have a personal painful experience, and Elizabeth had.

I should confess from the first chapters I did not like the book, the story, or the protagonist Vivian. I felt disgust for the frivolous behavior, her addiction to alcohol, and her addiction to indiscriminate sex with different men each night and sometimes even several men during the night. But diving deeper I fell in love with the book and the story because it is intimate and honest. It's about relationships, true love that has nothing connected with sex; about the Second World War and all its consequences, maturity and adolescence, theater and plays, art and culture, pain and suffering with grace and gratitude, aging and inevitable death, and of course about intimacy. I recommend reading this book to every single woman at any age, and even to a man.

The more I read "City of Girls" the more I saw my vulnerabilities, my ghosts, my darkness that still takes me by my neck and controls my life. I realized that I condemned Vivian for the way of her life, but during the book, I changed to acceptance. Trying to eradicate the last parts of my condemnation and accepting others as they are, and first of all myself.

I saw in the examples of different characters that true love in reality is not connected with sex, but of course, a person could feel true love and have sex simultaneously. The meaning of true love is difficult to understand and explain, it is only possible to feel, and again that is not only a feeling between man and woman, and not only a feeling of butterflies in your stomach, and definitely not a sexual desire.

The other important topic that is subtly written in red thread during the whole book is about maturity. A person becomes mature not after having sex, receiving a degree, getting married, or giving birth to a child. A person becomes mature when he or she takes responsibility for his/her life on him/her when he/she and only he/she is responsible for all shit in his/her life. When having a problem/challenge/obstacle in his/her life he/she does not hide, does not try to find support and help somewhere outside, but he/she looks at the face of this problem/challenge/obstacle with courage and gratitude himself/herself.

The last but not least topic is death, but I do not want to comment on it here, I will write an article about Elizabeth Gilbert's event in Cologne and will depict it there.

To make the long story short "The City of Girls" is your honest mirror sometimes painful, and unbelievably unfair, but sometimes inspiring, motivating, and pushing you to go out of your comfort zone, go out of your fears and sufferings.

July 6, 2024.