The Manhattan Girls: A Novel of Dorothy Parker and Her Friends by Gill Paul
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Web ID: 15058296Loved this book!
Masterpiece! Gil Paul pushed all of my buttons for an engaging historical fiction piece. I visited the Algonquin Hotel on a trip to New York in the mid 1980’s. Having a drink on the first floor, I remember imagining people who might have visited in the 1920s. I loved reading about “the bridge group”composed of Dottie Parker, Winifred Lenihan, Peggy Leach, and Jane Green. These women were a “self-help group” before this term was coined. My heart cried, laughed, had angry moments, wanted to hug and tell one of them as Gil Paul allowed the reader to be the fifth character of the group. Dottie’s story seemed to be the main thread to keep them together. She had an abortion, attested suicide, and seemed unlucky in love. The others had their problems but were true friends to Dorothy. Paul really did her research, and she had me looking people up to find out more about them as I was reading. This is definitely a book I will read or maybe listen to again. It is also a book that I will be thinking about for a long time.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
The Gotham Code Breakers
To be young, ambitious living in Manhattan and the talk of the town! Sitting side-by-side nightly with the literary wits of the day who dubbed themselves the “Vicious Circle” at the Algonquin Hotel Round Table on West 45th Street. A vision one hundred years later still evoking a magical period, maybe a decade long, of special brilliance and notoriety. But was it a Jazz Age Camelot? Gill Paul’s 2022 “The Manhattan Girls: A Novel of Dorothy Parker and Her Friends” explores this reputation through a four-in-hand approach for its plot progress. She evenly rotates her imagined story through the white spaces of four real women from the era and their emotional struggles to grow and succeed with their ambitions, domestic and professional: • Best known perhaps, Dorothy Parker with her incisive wit and trim writing • Jane Grant, first female reporter for The New York Times and resilient partner, lover and one-time wife of Harold Ross during the launch of The New Yorker magazine • Resourceful, supportive Conde Nast advertising executive, Margaret “Peggy” Leech, exploring her own writing capabilities • Beautiful, talented, sometimes mysterious Winifred Lenihan realizing early success on the Broadway stage with its own pitfalls and pratfalls These four perspectives are united into a single focus on how women with potential helped each other and coped with finding their paths in a fiercely competitive male-dominated metropolis despite the August 1920 certification of the Nineteenth Amendment, in effect, empowering the right of women to vote. The milieu of the “Gonk”, the Algonquin nickname, was overshadowed by the bigwig male competitors such as Alec Wolcott, Marc Connelly, George Kaufman and those occasional attendees like Bob Benchley, Harpo Marx, Robert Sherwood, exchanging sharp witticisms with sometimes not-so-subtle edge. It seemed like no place for a lady. Yet, hang in and survive these four talented women did. Their early 1920s bond is formed through a mutual decision to host their own bridge club for learning the game and staying in touch. Thereafter, their stories diverge, reunite and reach a resting place toward decade’s end. The insights of each’s experience are perhaps less familiar than legend would have: Parker is more neurotic in this portrayal; Grant challenged but amazingly resilient; Leech comforting and understated about her skills; the younger Lenihan an exceptional talent and with beauty attracting unwanted overtures. Paul’s approach is engaging, forthright, sometimes melodramatic in a 1930s style, and well-paced though not driving in intensity, except for Lenihan’s challenges and Parker’s manic swings. For additional familiarity with the Gotham atmosphere of this period, though set a little later, consider St Clair McKelway’s “Reporting from Wit’s End” collection of stories and articles he wrote for The New Yorker magazine from the 1930s onward and Amor Towles’ more recent novel, “The Rules of Civility”. Even after a century, the ghosts of the Round Table inspire retelling of their derring-do.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Highly recommend!
After WWI, more women were starting to realize that there could be more to life than being a housewife and mother; this book explores the friendship between four smart career women living in Manhattan during this period (the early 1920's). It is a well researched, fictionalized account of the lives of writer and satirist Dorothy (Dottie) Parker, the NY Times' first female reporter, Jane Grant, writer Margaret (Peggy) Leech, who worked in the Conde Nast ads department by day, and actress Winifred (Winnie) Lenihan, who wanted to be more than a pretty face. I was a little worried about the list of characters at the start of the book (would I be able to keep them all straight?), but these four women are the focus of the story and the author does a spectacular job of alternating between their points of view and making you care about each of them. I was engrossed in the plot from the first page to the last. Highly recommend!
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
A 1920s-era Sex & the City!
A poignant & captivating story of four women & their friends as they navigate the Prohibition-era streets of Manhattan! “The Manhattan Girls” is a work of art. I adored reading about Dottie, Jane, Winifred & Peggy - all strong, independent women in an era when it was less than popular for women to have lives outside of the home. I am embarrassed to say that I failed to realize these characters all existed in real life until about halfway through the book, which made it all the more enthralling once I did. I enjoyed researching the cast of characters once I finished & reading more about their achievements & adventures. A must-read for lovers of historical fiction!
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Good Book
The Manhattan Girls by Gill Paul is a great historical fiction that takes us to the heart of NYC in the early 1920s. I really enjoyed it. I have enjoyed several books by Ms. Paul in the past, so I knew I had to read her newest book, and it did not disappoint. This book, to me, was more than just about Dorothy Parker and her friends at this time. It was also about the seismic shifts politically, socially, and how post-WWI society was grappling with these massive changes. There was still the fundamental concepts of love, loss, friendship, relationships, betrayal, loyalty, finding one’s place in life within the novel, but the background and the pivotal alterations that were taking place and how that was affecting the characters, really added a layer of complexity to the narrative. I enjoyed the flawed and imperfect characters, but their interactions and relationships with one another were more of a draw to me and really made it a memorable book. 4/5 stars
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com