The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick

Set in New York, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance meetings, and ever-changing relationships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city that has done the same.

Running steadily through the book is Vivian Gornick’s animated exchange of more than twenty years with her best friend Leonard, as well as interactions with grocers, doormen, people on the bus, cross-dressers on the corner, and acquaintances by the handful.

A narrative collage that includes meditative pieces on the evolution of friendship over the past two centuries, in this memoir we encounter Gornick’s rich relationship with the ultimate metropolis.