Well… this was a very long book that ultimately made me feel like I both missed the point and wished I hadn’t received the one I got.

Initially I thought the book was going to be enjoyable, I’ve been to or lived in the places in Upstate NY Vivian had and the theater in NYC in the 40s was an interesting concept, and *was* honestly interesting at times.

Unfortunately, much like the 2 main foundational points of the book - the Title and the format of Vivian writing to Angela about her relationship with her father - that really had very little real estate in the book and were more like peripheral items to the story, the book was all over the place and not at all what it claimed to be.

The “City of Girls” was a play they ran for a short time and it never held any other thread in the book like titles would otherwise do. It was just one play among many others. Yes a bunch of crap hit the fan during it but it wasn’t the show itself, nor did it continue to be.

As for the recurring point of it being a letter about Angela’s father, he isn’t brought in until about 85% outside of a blip in the middle of the book, that yes, is revisited but still, very little. Everything else was about Vivian herself, not her relationship with Angela’s father.

It was like the longest way around the mountain to get to the supposed bottom line, that isn’t even the bottom line. The book just went on, and on, and the central theme, or at least main thread, of the book was ultimately Vivian’s sex life and sexual experimentation. Not a fan. I kept listening, thinking it would get better but it did not. The statement Vivian made in the book of how she defined herself was that she “had made the pursuit of sexual pleasure one of the guiding forces of my life”. That about sums up the book. I’d get it if it was a minor happening and moving on but it was quite literally a focal point.

Ultimately, the real story felt like I got unknowingly coerced into by the end.