Rating: ⭐⭐⭐✨⬜
Title: The Manhattan Girls
Author: Gill Paul
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: New York City, NY
Month Read: September 2022
Book Type: Paperback
Publication: 2022
Publisher: William Morrow and Company
Pages: 416
*September Books and Brews Book Club Pick
TRIGGER WARNING-
Rape / Sex / Alcohol / Suicide Attempts / Misogyny / Depression / Cheating / Affairs / Animal Abuse (??) / Divorce / Gambling / Language / Abortion
"Four Women. One City. An Impossible Dream"
No Spoiler Summary:
NEW YORK CITY 1921: The war is over, fashions are daring, and bootleg liquor is abundant. Here four extraordinary women form a bridge group that grows into a firm friendship.
Dorothy Parker: renowned wit, member of the Algonquin Round Table, and more fragile than she seems. Jane Grant: first female reporter for the New York Times, and determined to launch a new magazine she calls The New Yorker. Winifred Lenihan: beautiful and talented Broadway actress, a casting-couch target. And Peggy Leech: magazine assistant by day, brilliant novelist by night.
Their romances flourish and falter while their goals sometimes seem impossible to reach and their friendship deepens against the backdrop of turbulent New York City, where new speakeasies open and close, jazz music flows through the air, and bathtub gin fills their glasses.
They gossip, they comfort each other, and they offer support through the setbacks. But their biggest challenge is keeping their dear friend Dottie safe from herself.
Review:
I'm so glad this book in particular got picked for my monthly book club- I think it will spark a lot of great conversation, and each character was so different from the next I am dying to know what everyone thought. I have never read a Gill Paul book, but I'm super interested in diving into her catalogue after this.
My favorite part of the book is all of the actual information she included in the end, I'm someone who never stops wikipedia-ing after reading novels about real people, and I found so much information included in the book that I didn't really have to. She really did her research, and it shows, and I'm so happy to learn about more casts of characters from one of my favorite time periods.
The women in this novel were all so strong, but so flawed, and every single one of them felt so real to me. I know they're based on actual people, but sometimes I find books like this get caricaturey, and never did I feel that way about Dottie, Jane, Winifred, and Peggy. Dottie did get really tiresome throughout the novel, but I felt the novel may have been boring without her. I LOVED Winifred, however.
If you love the 20s, high spirited women, and some tough subjects, I highly recommend reading this. Let me know what you think!
Recommendation:
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler
The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Man Who Came to Dinner (play) by Moss Hart
"Four things I am wiser to know: idleness, sorrow, a friend and a foe."
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