Customer Reviews

Lipstick Jungle

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

My favorite thing about this book it that I, and also each of my friends, have picked out a favorite character. Wendy, Nico, and Victory are all such vibrant, interesting, and very different women. My favorite is Victory. She is independent and owns her own company, something I want for myself one day. She's fiercely creative, and she always speaks her mind, even when it gets her in trouble. She's such a quirky and unique personality that I feel so personally close to. I can understand her, especially when she realizes that she pushes men away because she is afraid of getting too close to them. When she realized this I felt like I was realizing it for the first time too. This is one of those rare books that can make you think about your own life in a new way.

I loved this book! I felt that Candace wasn't afraid to tackle some major issues, mainly the idea of happiness. Happiness is such a critical puzzle, and its ingredients shift (and deepen in complexity) with age. I also loved that Candace showed how wisdom and opportunity have truly, finally, turned the tables on so many of the old feminist struggles, and old sexual clichés, without solving them per se.

In Candace Bushnell's new novel we meet three forty-something career women all holding powerful positions in the fast-paced, dog-eat-dog city of New York. This glamorous middle-aged trio do not waste time during their power lunches obsessing about men. In the case of these women, it's career first--men and family second.

Wendy is a movie executive. Determined to win an oscar for her current project, she didn't notice that spoiled stay-at-home hubby is getting antsy. Victory's spring fashion disaster has her so busy putting out fires, billionaire boyfriend is viewed as nothing more than a side order on her full plate. Then there's Nico, editor-in-chief of a thriving magazine who is cheating on her university professor husband (just for the sex)with a boy toy male model.

Although these women appear to lead glamorous and enviable lives, the reader quickly learns that these high-power women are just like the rest of us and at some point (for most women) despite success, the question: What's really important?" always comes up. Another great read by Bushnell.

This is easily Bushnell's best novel yet. She manages to paint a fascinating picture of powerful women and does so without making them all witches. The 3 heroines are complex and, despite their successes, are not without their own problems that humanize them and make them accessible and likeable. Buy this book!

This is a wonderfully engrossing story of three high-powered career women in New York City. Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. It's filled with all the delicious little details and insights into the social scene that make you feel like an insider even if you aren't. With all that's going on in the country right now, I was greatful to escape into this novel. Very highly recommended!!!

Finally, an author has acknowledged the changing dynamics between men and women. I loved how the three main characters took on the traditional role of provider for the family. They?re uneasy about these roles at first, but by the end of the book they?ve learned how to reinvent these roles as women. Bushnell has recognized how the world is changing, and she?s presented these observations in a wonderful read with loads of depth below the surface. I would suggest this book to anyone.

I ordered my copy and I couldn't put it down, Candace Bushnell is our 21st Century Edith Wharton. The relationships between the women transcend the model of many contemporary novels. The story is engaging, inspiring, wildly entertaining and quite funny. The author has a razor sharp wit and she draws you in on the first page.
Do I love this book?
Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?

After being inundated with chick-lit books in which the heroine is
really a teenager in a 30-year old body, and where the only resolution
is to find a guy, it's refreshing to read about grown-up women who have
other things on their minds besides men. This is not your typical
chick-lit book. I loved the way Lipstick Jungle had women in situations
that we usually only think about men being in, and then watching how
the female characters dealt with these new challenges. I was also was
struck by how very real and modern these women's lives are. There were
so many things in the book that have happened to me or my
friends' especially Nico and Wendy's situations at work, where the men
were trying to take credit for their achievements. And in their
personal relationships, I loved the way Bushnell turned the tables on
men and had them in secondary positions.

Candace Bushnell's sexy female friends are still having sex in the city, just not as often since they are prowling the lipstick jungle of New York's most competitive and high profile industries --- fashion, publishing, filmmaking --- to secure the corner offices, multi-million dollar salaries and billboard recognition. The three friends --- Nico, Victory and Wendy --- are linked by their ambitions and their belief in one another.

The days of see-and-be-seen lunches at "café society" hot spots like "Michael's" or three martini meetings at "21" in Manhattan have become the domain of forty-something women who have moved out of the bedroom and into the boardroom. Bushnell's message to her mass audience of women in "Sex and the City" was to embrace and enjoy sexuality with confidence. LIPSTICK JUNGLE heralds career aspirations, hard work, success, and power as the secrets to attracting the opposite sex. "It's a jungle out there," a jungle of women with naked ambition and sheer attitude.

Although LIPSTICK JUNGLE is more about longer relationships with men than one-night stands and role reversal is predominant, there is a "giddy with excitement" and a "die from anticipation" sexual tension that is tempting to those who loved Samantha's ("Sex and the City") older woman-younger man relationship.

"Every woman knows that you have to combine at least two men to make one decent one" --- maybe not. I will never forget an article in the August 2004 issue of Town and Country written by David Brown, husband of Helen Gurley Brown, icon of the feminist movement and author of the groundbreaking international bestseller, SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL and founding editor of Cosmopolitan. Mr. Brown lovingly stated, "I'm never jealous of my celebrity wife. I've never felt less of a man because she was more of a woman."

Red is a symbol of passion, lust, power, heat, confidence and sex appeal, and in today's jungle, red is the only color on the cover of Bushnell's new book. Fittingly, "golden-reddish" haired Nico O'Neilly is editor-in-chief of Bonfire Magazine (I loved the connotation here) and is obsessed with being the first female CEO of the Splatch-Verner publishing division. Her timing and tactics are masterful. Feeling like nothing is new in her life, Nico takes a "hot male model who was eager to trade in his underwear for boy-toy status." Meanwhile, at home Nico's husband of 14 years, Seymour, is happy to teach one class at Columbia University, plan dinner parties and coach her on The Art of War in the office.

Victory Ford's rise to billboard recognition begins with the dazzling annual fashion week in New York and a less than victorious show. When the media and her peers reject her line, Victory rebounds with naked ambition and develops partnerships that result in her own couture line. Satisfied with her single and childless status, Victory treads cautiously with adoring billionaire boyfriend Lyne Bennett, who indulges Victory with his wealth, private jet and spur-of-the-moment trips, but acts as if he owns her. Victory wants to make billions in her own way and buy her own jet.

Wendy Healy is a distraught wife trying to keep her stay-at-home husband's extravagant spending and her three young children under control, but as President of Parador Pictures she is wildly successful and garners the Oscars to prove it. Unhappy with the role reversal, Wendy's ego-driven husband Shane demands a divorce and custody of the kids because of Wendy's hectic schedule. Wendy is in her forties, rich and successful and unthreatened by the male ego.

Candace Bushnell is one female who has successfully secured a place for herself in the lipstick jungle. The six-foot banner in the window of Borders Books announcing the release of LIPSTICK JUNGLE, a 20-city author tour and national television publicity affirms that she is the reigning tigress of the lipstick jungle. In fact, if I were to name a lipstick after Bushnell, I would call it "Manhattan Tigress." Publicity of this magnitude and expense is reserved for A-list authors whose next book is eagerly awaited by a mass audience.

From the runways of New York and Paris, the excitement of the Cannes Film Festival on the French Riviera, the sleek Manhattan boardrooms, and the New York Times bestseller list, Victory, Wendy, Nico and Candace are "staying in the game" and toasting with Dom Perignon as tigresses in the lipstick jungle.

--- Reviewed by Hillary Wagy

I read Lipstick Jungle in one weekend, I couldn't put it down. This is by far Candace Bushnell's best work, it's amazing to see how much she's grown as a writer. The characters are so multi-dimensional, modern, real---and so much fun to read about. She's worth all the hype, I'm so glad I read this book and can't wait for the next one. Such a terrific read.