Point of View

City of Girls is told from the point of view of Vivian Morris late in her life. The novel can be considered an epistolary one, in that it is framed as a single letter to a woman named Angela, whom readers learn is Frank Grecco's only daughter. Vivian recounts the story of when she first moved to New York City at the age of nineteen and all the events that followed -- her befriending a group of showgirls, her losing her virginity, her first boyfriend, the outbreak of World War II, etc. The novel is therefore written in past tense with a reflective tone, though occasionally the speaker ("older" Vivian) will interrupt her story to provide commentary on the events she describes.

The back-and-forth movement between the narrated past and the "present" from which Vivian writes provides the reader with an understanding of the type...