City of Girls (43 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Gilbert
The Last American Man
A
New York Times
Notable Book and National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
At the age of seventeen, Eustace Conway ditched the comforts of his suburban existence to escape to the wild. Away from the crushing disapproval of his father, he lived alone in a teepee in the mountains. Everything he needed he built, grew or killed. He made his clothes from deer he killed
and skinned before using their sinew as sewing thread. But he didn’t stop there. In the years that followed, he stopped at nothing in pursuit of bigger, bolder challenges.
Now, more than twenty years on, Eustace is still in the mountains, residing in a thousand-acre forest where he teaches survival skills and attempts to instill in people a deeper appreciation of nature. But over time he has
had to reconcile his ambitious dreams with the sobering realities of modernity.
‘It is almost impossible not to fall under the spell of Eustace Conway ... his accomplishments, his joy and vigor, seem almost miraculous’
New York Times Review of Books
‘Gilbert takes a bright-eyed bead on Eustace, hitting him square with a witty modernist appraisal of folkloric American masculinity’
The Times
‘Conversational, enthusiastic, funny and sharp, the energy of The Last American Man never ebbs’
New Statesman
First published in 2019 in the USA as
City of Girls
by Riverhead Books
First published in Great Britain 2019
This electronic edition published in 2019 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Elizabeth Gilbert, 2019
Elizabeth Gilbert has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBNs:
HB: 978-1-4088-6704-4
Airside/India/ South Africa TPB: 978-1-4088-6705-1
ANZ TPB: 978-1-5266-1042-3
eBook: 978-1-4088-6707-5
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