Review: City of Girls

Recap: It’s 1940, upstate New York, and Vivian has just been kicked out of Vassar College. It was the all-girls’ school way of reprimanding the student who wasn’t taking things seriously and wasn’t passing her classes. But Vivian didn’t see the point, living in a time when women were only expected to marry after college anyway. After being kicked out, her parents sent to her Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg. With no plan, no focus, and no idea what it’s like to live in the city, Vivian is thrown into a world beyond her imagination. She knew Aunt Peg ran a theater in New York City, but that’s about it. She soon found it was theater that performed low-tier original shows full of dancers, showgirls and lackluster talent. But it was a unique community offering, barely kept afloat by the regulars who attended the shows no matter how bad they were. Vivian, who loved to sew and make clothes, was in her glory. Upon learning of her talents, she was made to be the costumer for the theater, giving Vivian an “in” to befriend the women who were faster, flashier, sexier and harder partiers than she. Among that group was Celia. It’s not clear whether Vivian wants to be Celia or be with her, but nonetheless she befriends her, and soon Vivian is “inducted” into the group of boisterous women.

They encourage her to lose her virginity, to drink, to go clubbing, and Vivan loves every second of it. A progressive girl – particularly for that time – she has no shame about anything she’s doing. She simply wants to enjoy life, especially this big city life. Her Aunt Peg and Peg’s partner/friend, Olive, turn a blind eye to her outings and yet, always look out for her. That ultimately comes in handy.

Vivian is at the theater at a time when things start to blossom. Aunt Peg’s estranged husband, Billy, comes to New York from out of town and lives with them for a while. So does Peg’s friend, Edna, a superstar actress escaping the war in Europe alongside her handsome husband, Arthur. Billy, a writer, writes a new show for the theater, which Edna stars in. Suddenly smash reviews are coming in left and right and so are enormous audiences. Aunt Peg’s theater is the talk of town. And Vivian is living in the moment! But a sexually charged, alcohol-infused evening leads to a risque public moment – particularly for the 1940’s – that forces Vivian to leave the city, head hanging in shame.

And this, my friends, is just the first half of the book.

Analysis: City of Girls had been one of those books sitting at the top of my TBR List since it came out in 2019; I just hadn’t gotten around to it. I heard it was feminist (yay!), historical fiction (love!) and written by Elizabeth Gilbert, best known for her nonfiction smash, Eat Pray Love. So for several reasons, I was excited to dive in. I tore through it, though it is lengthier than my average read. It certainly entertained me, and I was riveted by the characters, but it was simultaneously both slow to start and then lost momentum at the end.

The first half of the book does a lot of scene-setting, introducing characters and offering a lot of exposition. The characters are a delight, and the dazzle of New York City, well, dazzles. But when one of my friends asked me if I’d gotten to page 250, I then had incentive to really power through the novel, and with good reason. The impact of page 250 is shocking and wild. At that point, I needed to keep reading to learn what happened next. The book is also told with a framing device of a now 95-year-old Vivian telling her story of her life to someone named Angela. The reader doesn’t find out until much later who Angela is, or how she’s connected to Vivian. So as the book continues, I became increasingly curious about who Angela was. But when I finally found out, it felt anti-climactic. And what’s most confusing is the book’s pacing. While the first half of the book centers around one year Vivian spends in New York, the second half tells the story of the rest of her life, speeding through decades and new characters. Vivian didn’t end up with any of the people I thought she would, and that’s probably the point. Ultimately, she ends up surrounded by strong women, a far cry from the “weaker” women described as her fellow classmates at Vassar earlier in the novel. And that womanly, feminist viewpoint is beautiful in its own right. I loved so many parts of this book. So much of it was fun, so much unexpected. But it also suffered from moments of meandering, and an ending that while nice, wasn’t as powerful as I wanted it to be.

MVP: Aunt Peg and Olive. This power duo becomes Vivian’s surrogate parents as her actual parents don’t legitimately seem to care much for their daughter. Peg and Olive are creatives, forward-thinkers, true New Yorkers through and through. The few scenes with them are some of the most powerful in the novel. They are the definition of strength.

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Review: It Starts With Us

Recap: It Starts With Us is the sequel to Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us and picks up immediately following the epilogue of It Ends With Us. That epilogue ends with about a year’s time jump and a brief interaction between Lily and Atlas, Lily’s first boyfriend from high school. As this second book in the series starts off, Lily is wondering if it’s even possible to make that relationship work again when she still has Ryle in her life. She and Ryle are now divorced, and their daughter is now about a year old. Co-parenting has not been easy. It never is, but when your ex is an abuser, there are added layers of challenges. She and Ryle have learned to get along while passing the baby between them but Ryle is clearly still holding out hope that they will get back together. He doesn’t quite understand the deep-seeded fear that now lies in Lily’s body. She quite literally contracts when he’s near. And he seems to be near a lot as he still has access to Lily’s apartment.

For the first time in the story of Lily and Atlas, the reader gets a clearer idea of how Atlas feels about their history and relationship. The book alternates narration between Lily and Atlas, bringing Atlas to the forefront of the story, compared to the first book in the series. As Lily deals with creating distance and space between her and Ryle to make room for Atlas, Atlas is ready to make room for Lily in his life, but it comes at a bad time. Someone has been vandalizing his new restaurant, and he quickly learns there’s a personal connection. As the two try to navigate all the complicated relationships around them, the one relationship they know they don’t have to question is the one they have with each other.

Analysis: After not loving much of It Ends With Us, I was concerned I would like It Starts With Us even less. But I was wrong. Revisiting familiar characters got me on board with the sequel much more willingly. I was happy to see Lily finally get the true happiness and joy she deserved. I was also happy to see Atlas deal with some of the abuse he faced when he was younger. It’s a point of pride – and relief – when Lily finally creates space between her and Ryle. My biggest gripe is her best friend, Allysa, who also happens to be the sister of Lily’s ex, Ryle. Though Ryle’s actions were reprehensible, it felt pretty implausible for her best friend to so quickly and willingly denounce her brother and stand by her friend. That makes her strong, sure. And her actions are right. But I do find it hard to believe that someone who loves her brother would so quickly take the other side.

It’s interesting to note that author Colleen Hoover did not originally plan to write this sequel at all, but her fans – and later, publisher – demanded it. It was nice to the rest of the story flushed out though. This is a rare occasion in which I feel the sequel actually added something of value, allowing for a real happy ending for Atlas and Lily and a more clear picture of and plan for how Lily and Ryle would continue to co-parent their daughter despite their relationship status. After having read this book, it makes It Ends With Us feel unfinished. This really completes the tale.

MVP: Atlas. He really is the best. He takes on new challenges without doubts and instead, full confidence that he can either a) handle it or b) it will all work out even if he can’t.

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Limited Series vs. Book: Fleishman Is In Trouble

When you first set out to read or watch Fleishman Is In Trouble, you think you know what you’re getting into: a story about a man and his divorce from his wife. That is mostly what the novel is about…until you learn the story really isn’t about that at all.

Toby Fleishman is a 40ish-year-old whose ex-wife, Rachel, drops their two children off at his Manhattan apartment and promptly disappears. Hours become days become weeks of Toby not being able to reach Rachel and floundering as he tries to juggle his career as a doctor and now full-time caring for his hormonal tween daughter, Hannah, and son, Solly. In modern-day post-divorce fashion, Toby is also on dating apps, where he’s trying — but not really — to date around. Mostly he’s just sleeping around. And masturbating around. And pornographing around. And again, trying to manage it all while also keeping up with the rich folks in his and Rachel’s elite social circle and not spontaneously combust. So yes. Toby Fleishman is, in fact, in trouble.

But so is Rachel Fleishman, which is what this story is really about. In fact, the story is a trojan horse, less about Toby and more about the women in his life: Rachel and Toby’s best friend from college, Libby. Libby is the narrator of the story. In the novel, this detail is slowly revealed over time. Initially, the reader learns the narrator isn’t Toby. Then we learn it’s a woman. Then we learn it’s his college friend. It’s not until more than 200 pages into the novel that the reader even learns this college friend’s name is Libby. All this goes to show how much Toby really thinks of Libby – or doesn’t, as the case may be – since he is so selfishly caught up in his own shit. As Toby deals with his own spiral, Rachel is having a nervous breakdown and Libby is struggling with a mid-life crisis, wondering what happened to her career as she grew a family in the suburbs. Libby writes about Toby, Rachel, herself and she and Toby’s other college friend, Seth as they navigate marriage, dating and divorce in their 40’s.

Both the book and series made me deeply fear divorce, since it’s portrayed as straight-up miserable for all parties involved. But the story is a more of a coming-of-age story set in mid-life as the four characters think about where they’ve been, what they want, and how they’re going to get where they want. The series follows the novel quite closely, as to be expected since the author of the novel also wrote the series. But the limited TV series (available on Hulu) makes some changes I don’t think quite work.

Compared to the overall length of the limited series, the show moves through Toby and Rachel’s story quite quickly, allowing the rest of the show to focus more on Libby and Seth. While they are main characters in the novel, there’s not quite that much of a focus on them so this turn feels sudden and forced Libby. In fact, the series really emphasizes Libby and her narration, whereas — as I mentioned before — the novel doesn’t and again, doesn’t even reveal her name until much later in the book. The overarching theme and statement the author is trying to make is that sadly, people are more likely to read stories about men than women. So she uses a woman to tell a man’s story that ultimately is secretly a woman’s story. The de-emphasis on Libby in the novel better evokes this statement. By centralizing her character at the end of the limited series, I found myself asking where did this come from? I wanted to see more of Rachel.

The series also lets Toby off the hook quite a bit and makes many of the characters more likable. In the novel, Toby is far more obsessed with his apps than in the series. He is disgustingly galavanting around New York City with random women. He is not focused on anything, which adds to his downfall. And his daughter is not quite the sweet girl they make her out to be in the series either. Author Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrote her Bat Mitzvah into the limited series. It does not happen in the book. But also, I was surprised to see the scenes in the series when Hannah asks to practice for her Bat Mitzvah because she is completely disinterested in the novel and has to be forced to study. She is a lot more annoying and has a lot more attitude in the novel than in the series, which makes sense as her parents’ marriage and lives crumble around her. She, Rachel and Toby are overall much more awful people in the novel than the show. That may make for a happier and more hopeful showcasing, but I also think the misery in the novel is pretty realistic considering what they’re all going through.

That’s not to say the book is miserable. For the record, the novel is fantastic. There’s a reason it was a bestseller when it came out; it resonates deeply with people of a similar age as these characters. There are moments sad and traumatic, and there are moments hopeful and uplifting. I recommend watching the series as the casting is great and the crux of the story is still well-told, but I recommend the book more.

Show vs. Book: Little Fires Everywhere

It’s 1997-1998 in Shaker Heights, Ohio. It’s an upper middle class community that upholds the belief that anti-racism is equivalent to colorblindness. That’s where we meet the Richardsons, a white, wealthy family: Bill and Elena and their four children, Lexie, Trip, Moody and Izzy. It’s also where we meet the Warrens, a lower-class family made up of a single mother and her daughter, Mia and Pearl. Elena rents her rental home to Mia and Pearl. That’s how Pearl meets Mood. The two are the same age and quickly become good friends.

The two families begin to intertwine as Mia starts working as a housekeeper for the Richardsons to make a little extra cash and keep her eye on Pearl, who is wooed by the wealth and status of the Richardsons and spends much of her time at their home. As Pearl warms up to Elena, badly wanting that life, so too does Izzy warm up to Mia. Izzy is the black sheep of the Richardson family, the one the others don’t seem to understand. She comes to love Mia and her life and career as an artist and begins to spend time with her as an apprentice.

Another side job of Mia’s is a waitressing job at a Chinese restaurant, where she becomes friendly with her co-worker Bebe Chow. Bebe gave up her baby daughter when she was an infant and left her outside a firehouse. Mia later puts two-and-two together and discovers that Bebe’s daughter has since been adopted by friends of the Richardsons. The intertwining of the Richardsons and Warrens becomes mangled as Mia helps Bebe in a legal battle to win her daughter back from Elena’s good friend. And there is just as much intermingling and mangling happening between Pearl and the Richardson brood.

There are figurative fires sparking everywhere throughout the book, in Mia’s backstory, in Lexie’s current story and so on and so on. They all erupt in a literal fire engulfing the Richardsons’ home, which is used as a framing device bookending the story.

The show takes the bones of the book and portrays all this excellently onscreen with the talent of Reese Witherspoon as Elena Richardson and Kerry Washington as Mia Warren. (Not to mention the phenomenal kids who play the teenaged children.) But the show makes some serious changes, and I actually think most are for the better.

The book is not bad. In fact, it’s freaking great. Its themes around race are centered on Bebe Chow and how she is treated in the justice system as a poor Asian woman compared to the rich, white people. The TV series on Hulu, however, takes race a huge step further by making the Warrens black. Mia and Pearl are never explicitly said to be black in the novel. The mention of Pearl’s frizzy hair is as close as the author gets. By making them black, many more stories lines explicitly touch on race in the series, broadening the themes of the novel beyond wealth and socioeconomic status. The series came out a few months before the death of George Floyd, so it’s impossible to have known how much the series would resonate now, in retrospect, but it certainly does.

In terms of plot, the series adds a lot more backstory for Elena and a few more subplots between the children – which also touch on race. But the biggest change the series makes is the way it unravels all of the secrets the characters are keeping: about abortions, lovers, postpartum depression, childbearing, finances. In the book, many of the secrets remain just that: secrets. While a handful of characters escape Shaker Heights at the end of the novel, so many things are left undiscussed and unaddressed. We, the readers, are left to assume whether or not those conversations ever happen. In the TV series, however, no one can keep their mouth shut! The secrets not only come out but are hurled at other characters like giant fireballs across a room, only building the deep-seeded rage between several people and leading to even more outlandish actions.

When it comes to the massive, literal fire at the end (and technically beginning) of the story, it’s clear in the series that there is a handful of people involved in setting it. It takes the entire series to finally bond these characters together, and when they comes together in a spiteful act of arsonistic rage, it is ridiculously satisfying in a way that the ending of the book isn’t.

Get Little Fires Everywhere in paperback for $8.67.

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Review: Before We Were Yours

Recap: The location is a hospital in the South. The time is the 1930s. The twins delivered did not fare well. The parents are destroyed.

And now here we are, in present day, following the life of Avery Stafford. The 30-something lawyer is used to living in the limelight of her father and his long political reign. But now he is sick, and she is forced to prepare to take his spot in politics as he also deals with an ongoing scandal involving nursing homes. In visiting her grandmother at one, Avery meets another elderly woman who is completely taken with her. A misplaced bracelet and a curious family photo forces Avery to return to the woman as she itches to learn more about her and whether this woman is somehow connected to her own family.

Now we are back to the 1930s, and Rill Foss is left in charge of her brother and sisters after their parents rushed to the hospital. Living on the river in Tennessee, they are now orphans as their parents never return. They are scooped up and taken in by the Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, and they face every form of abuse: verbal, physical, sexual. Living in a constant state of fear, Rill feels compelled to take care of her siblings, but there’s only so much a 12-year-old girl can do.

The stories of Rill and Avery intertwine more and more throughout Before We Were Yours in a beautiful and mysterious way, but it’s the fact that this historical fiction novel is based on true events from the real horrors of adoption in the 1930s that make this book so haunting.

Analysis: One of the characters we come to know in the book is the woman who run’s the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, Georgia Tann. But Georgia Tann was a real woman, known for having made adoption in the United States an industry and for charging families an exorbitant amount of money for adopting children. These children were bought and sold, practically as a form of slavery and treated traumatically in the process.

Author Lisa Wingate tells this story through the lens of a little girl during the time and through the eyes of a present-day woman who, like many of us, had no idea any of this was happening in the 1930s.

Despite the horrors, Wingate does an excellent job of keeping the reader invested in the characters, curious about what happens next and still manages to offer hope through the love we see shine through her characters. Before We Were Yours takes a bit of time to get into, but once you start to put together the pieces of the puzzle and realize that Rill and Avery and the old woman she meets are all connected, the journey to get there is worth every word.

MVP: Rill. She has been through so much and has been forced to grow up very fast at a very young age. She has no choice. But she does it with vigor and comes out on the other side.

Get Before We Were Yours now in paperback for $10.29.

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Review: The Storyteller’s Secret

Recap: It’s after Jaya’s third miscarriage that her marriage falls apart. A journalist in New York, she is at a loss. She no longer has her husband to turn to for support, and her relationship with her mother has always been difficult, lacking love and support. It’s around this time that Jaya learns the grandfather she never knew is dying. He lives in India, where her parents were born, but her mother has no interest in returning home to see her father. Confused and alone, desperately seeking comfort and support in her family, Jaya decides to visit India, to get away from her own problems and to meet her grandfather and learn why he sent her mother away to America many years ago.

By the time she arrives, he has already passed. Inside her mother’s childhood home, she instead finds Ravi, her mother and grandmother’s servant. Ravi welcomes Jaya instantly and over the course of several weeks shows Ravi around India and tells her about her grandparents. It’s a long saga about love, secrets and finding one’s own path. It’s a story that even Jaya’s mother knows nothing about. It’s a story that changes her perception of her life, world and family forever. In looking to the past, Jaya is able to better understand her present and re-shape her future.

Analysis: In its simplest form, the plot of The Storyteller’s Secret sounds like the start of Eat, Pray, Love: woman’s life falls apart, woman sets out on journey across the world, woman finds herself. But Secret also adds the element of the past. The story also changes time periods and storytellers, switching back and forth between Jaya and her grandmother, Amisha, decades earlier. It gives the story an extra layer of depth and mystery that the read is dying to uncover. I found I could not put this book down, desperately wanting to know what happened in Jaya’s family history and how it affected her today.

The title of the book is a reference to so much storytelling that’s happening here: the narration from both Jaya and Amish, the story of Jaya’s past as told to her by Ravi, and the storytelling that Jaya does as a journalist and that her grandmother used to do as a writer and writing teacher. The parallels between Jaya and her unknown grandmother are beautiful and help to deepen the bond between Jaya and her mother. The story is moving in its statements about different cultures and especially womanhood: relationships between women, the strength of women and the sacrifices they make for their families.

The Storyteller’s Secret is a powerful, unstoppable read that makes you laugh, cry, think and feel. A truly excellent story.

MVP: Ravi. While the women are the focus of this book, Ravi may be the real star, the glue that binds together the woman of generations past and present, telling the stories that Amisha is unable to tell in her death. His generosity and love knows no bounds.

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Review: The Ocean At the End of the Lane

Recap: A man has returned to his hometown for a funeral, but somehow something pulls him away from the funeral to an old neighbor’s home. He finds himself there, chatting with the familiar women who live there, but Lettie, the little girl he once knew who used to live there is no longer there. He can’t remember where she is or what ever happened to her. But as he sits by the pond behind her home, it all comes back to him.

The story turns into a long flashback to the man’s childhood. He recalls several captivating nights that are hard to believe he could ever forget. It starts with the memory of a man who killed himself in his father’s car parked at the end of his street. The man had gambled away all his friend’s money. This opens the world of the supernatural to the world of the natural, and suddenly strange things happen to the boy: a coin lodges in his throat; a worm is stuck in his foot; and his family hires a new babysitter. The babysitter turns out to be a personification of all the bad and of the supernatural infiltrating its way into the boy’s life. Her name is Ursula, and the boy is horrified.

He escapes as often as he can to his neighbors’ house, where Lettie lives. Lettie, her mother and grandmother have magical powers that allow them to manage the supernatural making its way into their world. But as his world falls apart thanks to Ursula, the boy isn’t so sure he, his family or Lettie and her family will ever be safe.

Analysis: The magic and fantasy of this novel threw me off initially. At first, I thought the author was writing in metaphors, but somewhere along the way, I realized everything was meant to be taken literally. Fantastical stories like this aren’t typically my favorite, but this one was intriguing. I didn’t know where it was going and I was interested enough to keep reading and find out. The ending turned out to be much sadder than I expected for not only the main character, but also for his magical friend Lettie.

I appreciated the end — however sad it may have been — for its acknowledgement of things coming full circle and the notion that childhood events have a lasting impact on one’s adult life. The book’s final moments are fairly open-ended, but because of the mystery of the story and the inherent enchantment that that mystery brings, it works. Ocean left me feeling wistful for answers and childhood — wistful in a good way.

MVP: Lettie. She’s a young girl with an old soul. Without giving anything away, we later find out why. But she is strong, and just the kind of person to give the story’s main character all the confidence he can muster.

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