City Girl [Paperback]

City girl is a book written by Patricia Scanlan which dealswith ordinary problems of every day life. She analyses them tellingthe story of three girls. They are dissimilar for upbringing and personality: Devlin is a rich girl, the only child of an upper class Dubliner family, who has a bad relationship with her mother. Caroline, a fat, sensitive and insecure girl wins her battle with food thanks to Devlin's help. Maggie is a very determined person who believes in freedom and in good feelings. For this reason she has chosen to be a nurse. The setting of the book is Dublin, of which the author gives a detailed description, focusing on the streets, the shops and Dubliners. She also portrays New York when Maggie goes there to work. Patricia Scanlan uses a language that has a strong effect on the reader. Through her words we can imagine the emotions, fears, the happiness and dreams of the three girls. I liked the book because the bad and beautiful events of the protagonists involved and intrigued me very much. I also liked the fact that there are a lot of dialogues between the girls, so the narration is more dynamic. I think that this is a great book!

City Girl by Patricia Scanlan, the author of Apartment 3B, Foreign Affairs and many others books about love friendship and inner growth, is her number one best-seller. This book shows a vivid, fresh picture of Dublin society. It is the story of three girls, Devlin, Caroline and Maggie, and the way in which they become women after facing great problems in their lives with the only support of mutual friendship. Devlin, rich, beautiful spoilt and snob, falls in love with Colin, a married successful doctor, who gets her pregnant and leaves her in trouble. The decision of keeping her baby against Colin and her mother's will changes her life drastically. She starts to stand on her own two feet and she faces poverty for her baby's sake with the only help of her friends. When she looses her aunt and baby in a car accident, for the second time in a life a man, Luke, changes her life positively. He helps her to overcome her depression and makes her feel alive again. When the story begins, Caroline is a fat, shy girl, who is terrified by the idea of "being left on the shelf". Devlin helps her to loose weight and to think more about her own needs. When she meets Richard she decides to marry him not to be alone. Richard only wants a wife to show off at parties. After a while, he starts to be more and more aggressive and to beat her. Caroline turns to alcohol and valium before she finally finds out that her husband is homosexual. She feels that nobody loves her and she thinks that her life is a disaster, but she finally succeeds in becoming her husband's best friend, and in gaining his respect. Maggie is an independent working woman that generously devotes her life to people. Although she works a lot, she travels around the world and has many love affairs. When she meets Terry she changes her life-style: she becomes a housewife and takes care of him and of their three children. Terry does not show any gratitude because he takes her for granted. Then she finds him with another woman and from that moment on she decides to take some time to see her friends and to do what she likes in life. The book is well written, in a simple, understandable style. The Author is good at creating suspense, so that the reader desires to go on to know what happens. She also relies on the technique of flash-back, framing the story with a prologue and an epilogue. Than she divides the story into three narrative strands, each corresponding to one of the girls. Perhaps sometimes you think you are reading a soap-opera on paper, but I think that this is one of the reasons for the success of the book. I think that especially young women who have to take their first important decisions will love this book. I really loved it and I think it is great if you want a light book in which you may get involved. It was very hard to put it down, so I would strongly recommend it to anybody.

Alessandra Bordoni