Product Description

'Bushnell's beat is that demi-monde of nightclubs, bars, restaurants and parties where the rich come into contact with the infamous, the famous with the wannabes and the publicity-hungry with the gossip-peddlers' EVENING STANDARD Wildly funny, unexpectedly poignant, wickedly observant, SEX AND THE CITY blazes a glorious, drunken cocktail trail through New York, as Candace Bushnell, columnist and social critic par excellence, trips on her Manolo Blahnik kitten heels from the Baby Doll Lounge to the Bowery Bar. An Armistead Maupin for the real world, she has the gift of assembling a huge and irresistible cast of freaks and wonders, while remaining faithful to her hard core of friends and fans: those glamorous, rebellious, crazy single women, too close to forty, who are trying hard not to turn from the Audrey Hepburn of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S into the Glen Close of FATAL ATTRACTION, and are - still - looking for love.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31547 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"Relationships in New York are about detachment. But how do you get attached when you want to?"

Candace Bushnell, in the divinely bitchy Sex and the City, answers this question by introducing a formidable corps of successful grown-ups who are each "up to their cuffs in polished cynicism". Fully equipped with high credit limits, high heels and a never-ending supply of condoms, they storm their way through the stars and bars of New York doing drugs, drink and sex and treading the dangerous waters between the easy-living twentysomething years and the last-chance thirtysomethings.

As successful and smart single women work their way through Married Men and Modelisers (men who will only date models), Serial Daters and Perennial Bachelors, watching forlornly as the occasional Happily Married pops in to remind themselves how lucky they are, Bushnell irreverently dives in and out of varying habitats, eavesdropping on shabby lives decorated with Gold Cards and Designer Labels and taking the reader on an anthropological tour of the underbelly of the rich and the richer on their endless search for fulfilment.

Painfully sharp, often poignant and chock full with more truth than anyone would really like to admit, Sex and the City is a harem-scarem, casually vicious but ultimately thorough dissing of a thirtysomething world where gloss and glamour can never compensate for The Real Thing, and where eventually Settling is the only answer. --Susan Harrison

Review
'Intriguing and highly entertaining' Helen Fielding, author of BRIDGET JONES' DIARY 'Imagine Jane Austen with a martini, or perhaps Jonathan Swift on rollerblades' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Imagine THE SUN edited by Jane Austen ... hilarious ... a compulsively readable book, served on bite-sized chunks of irrepressible irreverence.' MARIE CLAIRE 'Irresistable, hilarious and horrific, stylishly written. You might be appalled but anyone who lives here will recognise that Candace Bushnell has captured the big black truth. The only people who won't succumb to the book's very real charms are the ones in it and they'll probably be too preoccupied trying to figure out who's who.' Bret Easton Ellis 'Punchy, archly knowing and sharply observed...Bushnell offers a brash, radically unromantic perspective...the effect is that of an Armistead Maupin-like canvas tinged with a liberal smattering of Judith Krantz...these essay are brain candy that will appeal equally to urban romantics and unromantics.' PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY 'Fascinating and haunting insights into the love lives of the rich and randy in New York...An oddly touching collection...with the detached grace of an early Didion...Often funny and occasionally bleak, this is a captivating look at the 'Age of Un-Innocence' in a city in which the glittering diversions don't quite make up for the fact that 'Cupid has flown the coop." KIRKUS REVIEWS 'Bushnell's canape-sized bites of Manhattan life stylishly capture a clubbing and dating scene...' INDEPENDENT

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'Imagine Jane Austen with a martini, or perhaps Jonathan Swift on rollerblades'

Customer Reviews

Sex and The City - Nothing like the TV series.
I am a huge fan of the humour and insight shown on the TV series Sex and the City. Unfortunately this book is nothing like it - just an inane selection of conversations with no apparent point or punch-line.

This book is poorly written and lacks the likeable characters featured on the TV series.

The many Americanisms and references to people only Americans have heard of, also makes it a difficult read for people outside the US.

My advice. Don't bother.

what an unpleasant "surprise"!
Since I am a fan of the TV series, I treated myself to this book .....What a mistake !! The screenwriter is to be congratulated in making a silk purse from a sow's ear...the book is noticeably lacking in the wit and charm that pervades the series..Just a set of boring monologues ......

Interesting read for Sex and the City fans!
If you are expecting something identical to the TV series then you probably would be disappointed, as the show is clearly only based on it. Carrie and Big feature a lot but Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha only appear a handful of times. If anything, this book made me cringe and feel less positive about finding my Mr Right than before I picked it up! It made me glad I don't live in Manhattan! However, I still would recommend it, it is a good, light read and humorous to say the least. Just don't let it put you off men completely, I'm sure there are a few decent ones out there!!!