Vivian Gornick was 79 when she first published The Odd Woman and the City; now some 10 years on it has been reissued in a British edition by the local publishing house (and excellent independent book seller) Daunt, with an engaging foreword by writer Amy Key.
The cover tells us it’s a memoir, but this small, self-contained book is much more than that. It’s a paean to the power of place (and especially to the author’s hometown of New York), a meditation on friends and family, and an incisive commentary on society from a woman who was at the forefront of radical feminism in the 60s and 70s and lived through the shock of 9/11.
Born in the Bronx, Gornick couldn’t wait to move downtown, spending eight years in its beating heart as a writer with The Village Voice. And she never left, finding her spiritual home in Manhattan where “we, the eternal groundlings … wander these mean and marvellous streets in search of a self reflected back in the eye of the stranger”.
The importance of friendships, especially with her lifetime ally and confidante Leonard, the role of romantic love and sexual attraction, and her relationship with her mother are the essential themes she returns to throughout the book.
Fierce Attachments, the 1987 memoir that focused on her upbringing and the loss of her father, was the most awarded of her many books, and echoes of those pages can be found here. As Gornick says, “There had only been one right person and now he was dead.” Her mother’s depression intensified after his death and was so overwhelming that “it blotted out the earth”.
That’s not to suggest that this is a sad or depressing book; indeed, it’s entirely the opposite. Just reading it is uplifting and makes you rejoice in being alive and celebrate the very “is-ness of what is”.
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The Odd Woman and the City really is a beautiful book. It’s a perfectly crafted memoir written with the eye of someone who can take a step back and look inwards with a little dispassion. There is an engaging tone of self-discovery with no hint of the contrived confessional. As she observes, “No one is more surprised than me that I turned out to be who I am.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all look at our own life and say the same?
This is a book to read and treasure.
The Odd Woman and the City, Vivian Gornick
Publisher: Daunt Books Publishing
Publication date: 16 January 2025
ISBN: 9781914198984
Format: Paperback
Pages: 165 pages
Price: £10.99
