One Fifth Avenue [Audio Cassette]

Candace Bushnell (Author), Carrington Macduffie (Narrator)

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Books On Tape (2008)
• ISBN-10: 1415959609
• ISBN-13: 978-1415959602
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (149 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Candace Bushnell is the critically acclaimed, international best-selling novelist whose first book, Sex and the City, published in 1996, was the basis for the HBO hit series. Bushnell captured the country's attention with Sex and the City by breaking down the bedroom doors of New York City's rich and beautiful to expose true contemporary stories of sex, love and relationships. The book introduced the nation to "modelizers," "toxic bachelors" and the women who are looking for Mr. Big as they glide in and out of a star-studded social scene. With Four Blondes (2000), Bushnell gave readers another uncensored look into the mating rituals of the Manhattan elite. In each of this book's four linked novellas, Bushnell uses wry humor and frank portrayals of love and lust to deliver clever, hilarious and socially relevant portraits of women in New York City. Four Blondes was a critical and commercial hit. And the successes of Sex and the City and Four Blondes created high demand for a new genre of fiction; the chick-lit phenomenon had begun. Bushnell's third novel, Trading Up (2003) is a wickedly funny social satire about a lingerie model whose reach exceeds her grasp and whose new-found celebrity has gone to her head. The book takes place in the months leading up to 9/11, and portrays an era of wearily decadent society in New York. A sharply observant, keenly funny comedy of manners Trading Up is Bushnell at her most sassy and entertaining; this novel caused the The New York Times to call Bushnell "the philosopher queen of a social scene." A movie of Trading Up is currently in production at Lifetime Television. In Lipstick Jungle (2005), her fourth novel, Bushnell explores assumptions about gender roles in family and career. The book follows three high-powered friends as they weather the ups and downs of lives lived at the top of their game. Salon called Bushnell's work "ahead of the curve" Once again, with Lipstick Jungle, Bushnell captured the paradigm of a new breed of career woman facing modern challenges and choices. Lipstick Jungle became the basis for the popular drama on NBC, currently in its second season, and starring Brooke Shields, Kim Raver, Lindsay Price and Andrew McCarthy. Bushnell serves as an executive producer on the show. Bushnell's new novel, One Fifth Avenue, is a modern-day story of old and new money, the always combustible mix that Edith Wharton mastered in her novels about New York's Gilded Age and that F. Scott Fitzgerald illuminated in his Jazz Age tales. Bushnell's New Yorkers suffer the same passions as those fictional Manhattanites from eras past: thirst for power, for social prominence, and for marriages that are successful-at least to the public eye. "Here are bloggers and bullies, misfits and misanthropes, dear hearts and black hearts, dogfights and catty squalls spun into a darkly humorous chick-lit saga," says Publisher's Weekly. Through her books and television series, Bushnell's work has influenced and defined two generations of women. She is the winner of the 2006 Matrix Award for books (other winners include Joan Didion and Amy Tan), and a recipient of the Albert Einstein Spirit of Achievement Award. Bushnell grew up in Connecticut and attended Rice University and New York University. She currently resides in Manhattan.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sexier Than Edith Wharton, September 24, 2008

By 

Eileen Pollock (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: One Fifth Avenue (Hardcover)

I had never read a Candace Bushnell novel before this and never seen a complete episode of Sex and the City, though I had heard of it. I've been disappointed by most of the recent (and ballyhooed) novels I've read. But on previewing an excerpt of One Fifth in Vogue, I was intrigued by the profoundly shallow character of Lola Fabrikant, a fabricated girl with a name to match. Now on reading the book, I am genuinely impressed. Candace Bushnell is a true storyteller, and that's no small praise. She's written a pageturner, crafted memorable characters, imbued them with individuality and personality, and given them the most luscious lines to speak. Her subject is not sex despite what you may think, and though there is considerably more explicitness than in Edith Wharton or Jane Austen (you may skip, as I did, the overly anatomical descriptions), Bushnell's real subject is the pursuit of status and success in New York City at the present moment. Many have tried this subject before, but the Jayne Krentzes and Rona Jaffes of the past were hacks compared to Bushnell. She's not an artist, but she is very clever and even wise. And she spins a darn good story, which is what a novel, to me, should be about. Almost every character in One Fifth Avenue is lacking his heart's desire, is deeply dissatisfied, and these frustrated desires, which conflict with those of their neighbors, drive the plot lines of the novel. The greatest desire of all is not for love, but for real estate, in the form of a penthouse triplex at One Fifth Avenue, up for sale after the death of its centenarian socialite owner, felled on her own terrace in a driving rainstorm. A crowning irony is that this aged doyenne who possesses the acme of desire, the immense apartment atop Manhattan's coveted address, dies of pneumonia because her servants can't locate her in time in the 7,000 square foot apartment. Such is the futility of possession.

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Big Disappointment for Me, October 20, 2008

By 

Julie Book Lover "julie5635" (Syracuse, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Fifth Avenue (Hardcover)

I am a huge fan of Candace's previous work, addicted to Sex In the City, watch Lipstick Jungle faithfully - so I was excited to see this come out and grabbed it immediately. I have struggled repeatedly to get through this book, and force myself to keep coming back to finish as I keep hoping something better will happen. Almost too many character storylines fighting for attention, hard to keep track! Not only does it also seem overdone, some even seems like "I've read it before" in her other books. I too think the characters are shallow and not even quite sure of the point of some of them - even for the staunchest of fans, I wouldn't recommend it.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bushnell does it again!, September 23, 2008

By 

T. Shick - See all my reviews
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This review is from: One Fifth Avenue (Hardcover)

Candace Bushnell is a genius in this medium. She is a wonderful literary talent who mixes comedy with dark drama in the most interesting of New York settings. ONE FIFTH is a comedy that both New Yorkers and Americans alike can relate to as the tenants of this grand building trample over each other when some try to reach their way to the top of the social scale and buy what is certainly one of the best penthouses in NYC's famous Greenwhich village. Where the fervent Bushnell fans will be delighted to see familar-type faces; the young Lola Fabrikant, the gorgeous actress Schiffer Diamond, that everyone wishes they were. New readers will maybe find a bit of themselves in the reserved but intelligent character of Annalisa or the overachiever, Mindy Gooch, who just never finds happiness, no matter how much she has accomomplished. ONE FIFTH is surely one of the most revelent books on the shelves right now and the best thing about it is, it's a damn good read. TS