How long does it take to read City of Girls: A Novel?
City of Girls: A Novel by Elizabeth Gilbert takes about 9 hours 6 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 9 hours 6 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2019. 496 pages, about 136,400 words.
19 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 15 hours 9 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 9 hours 6 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 41 minutes |
The page count is the median across 19 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance. Her affluent parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant, crumbling midtown theater called the Lily Playhouse. There Vivian is introduced to an entire cosmos of unconventional and charismatic characters, from the fun-chasing showgirls to a sexy male actor, a grand-dame actress, a lady-killer writer, and no-nonsense stage manager. But when Vivian makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal, it turns her new world upside down in ways that it will take her years to fully understand. Ultimately, though, it leads her to a new understanding of the kind of life she craves - and the kind of freedom it takes to pursue it. It will also lead to the love of her life, a love that stands out from all the rest. Now eighty-nine years old and telling her story at last, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life - and the gusto and autonomy with which she approached it. "At some point in a woman's life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time," she muses. "After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is."
Subjects: Young women, Fiction, Children of the rich, Nineteen forties, Theaters, Entertainers
