Sex and the City [Paperback]

Candace Bushnell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1997

Enter a world where the sometimes shocking and often hilarious mating habits of the privileged are exposed by a true insider. In essays drawn from her witty and sometimes brutally candid column in the New York Observer, Candace Bushnell introduces us to the young and beautiful who travel in packs from parties to bars to clubs. Meet "Carrie," the quintessential young writer looking for love in all the wrong places..."Mr. Big," the business tycoon who drifts from one relationship to another..."Samantha Jones," the fortyish, successful, "testosterone woman" who uses sex like a man...not to mention "Psycho Moms," "Bicycle Boys," "International Crazy Girls," and the rest of the New Yorkers who have inspired one of the most watched TV series of our time. You've seen them on HBO, now read the book that started it all...

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The "Sex and the City" columnist for the New York Observer documents the social scene of modern-day Manhattan. The reader gets an introduction to "Modelizers," the men who only have eyes for models, as well as a more common species, the "Toxic Bachelor." Reading like a society novel gone downtown and askew, Sex and the City is a comically sordid look at status and ambition and the many characters consumed by the sexual politics of the '90s. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"We're leading sensory saturated lives," announces jetsetting photographer and playboy Peter Beard in a roundtable discussion of menages a trois, setting the tone of opulent debasement that suffuses this collection of Bushnell's punchy, archly knowing and sharply observed sex columns from the New York Observer. Prowling the modish clubs, party circuit and weekend getaways of rich and trendy New York society (most of whose denizens are identified by pseudonyms), Bushnell offers a brash, radically unromantic perspective. She visits a sex club and dates a Bicycle Boy ("the literary romantic subspecies" whose patron saints are George Plimpton and Murray Kempton). But in most chapters she keeps to the sidelines, deploying instead her alter-ego Carrie (like the author, a blonde writer from Connecticut in her mid-30s), whose sweet if feckless romance with Mr. Big?a nondescript power player?serves as a foil for the hilarious, unsentimentalized misadventures of her peers. These include model-chasers like Barkley, 25, a painter with the face of a Botticelli angel whose parents pay for his SoHo junior loft, and Tom Peri, the "emotional Mayflower," who ferries newly dumped women to higher emotional ground and is then invariably dumped. The effect is that of an Armistead Maupin-like canvas tinged with a liberal smattering of Judith Krantz. Collected in one volume, Bushnell's characters grow generic, but in small doses these essays are brain candy that will appeal equally to urban romantics and anti-romantics.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; Reissue edition (September 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446673544
• ISBN-13: 978-0446673549
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (248 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #137,793 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #88 in Books > Self-Help > Relationships > Dating

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.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

133 of 133 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A disarmingly candid, greatly superificial, and charmingly quirky book May 5, 2007

By Tom Benton

Format:Mass Market Paperback

As someone who recently discovered (and became addicted to) HBO's delightful series "Sex and the City," it was inevitable that I'd wind up investigating Candace Bushnell's book. Bushnell's book is the collected form of the column she wrote for years before TV writer Darren Star turned it into a hit television series. Ironically, though Bushnell's book probably wouldn't get anywhere near as much attention if it weren't for the TV series, it's because of the TV series that it appears so many readers have had a foul reaction to the book. It's true that those expecting the TV show on paper are bound to be disappointed, probably in a big way, because Bushnell's "Sex and the City" doesn't have a lot in common with the show.

For the most part, the book does revolve around Carrie Bradshaw (a thinly-disguised alter-ego for Bushnell, with even the same initials), a thirty-something columnist in New York. Miranda Hobbes does show up a few times during the first half of the book, though she's not a lawyer. Samantha Jones is not a PR agent nor such a nymphomaniac as she was in the show. And Charlotte is a British woman, whose TV counterpart appeared at the beginning of the series' pilot episode. Stanford Blatch, Carrie's successful homosexual friend, is the only character who remains virtually the same, though here he's a screenwriter. Many of the same situations presented throughout the show pop up in the book, such as Stanford's obsession with his model "protege," the torment of the baby shower, and "modelizers." And those who loved Chris Noth's Mr. Big needn't worry. Big is a major character in the book and is just as adorable (and even less rambunctious) as he was in the show, though the outcome of he and Carrie's relationship is different in the book than in the show.

Bushnell's columns were meant more as musings on the life of single women in New York, and often single men as well, than as a linear narrative. Thus it's surprising that her writings work so well as a book. She has a very cute, quirky, innocent style of writing, and that's a big part of what makes her book such a blast. However Bushnell offers little insight into what any of the characters are actually feeling, and rightly so: it just accents their appalling and, frankly, upsetting superficiality. The dating scene in Manhattan is a hellish world where all that matters is sex, money, fashion, and drugs. Bushnell is obviously deeply involved in this world, and it's her knowledge of it, along with her characters' candid musings, that kept me reading.

In the end, those expecting the HBO series in a book are going to be very disappointed. Those expecting something resembling the HBO series will probably be let down as well. The book and the series are designed for two different worlds - while the show tended to have a sweet optimism to it, Bushnell writes with the same sort of dreamy, hopeful cynicism that one would find in a Bret Easton Ellis book. However, those who would rather read the book than incessently compare it with the show may enjoy it. I recommend Candace Bushnell's "Sex and the City" to those who are younger and looking for a fun, unusual, honest read.

176 of 192 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Don't Expect the Series, But Worth a Read February 15, 2003

By Kate

Format:Paperback

Being a huge fan of the TV series (like most people reading this, I'd imagine), and looking for something somewhat fluffy to read, I ordered this book and quickly finished it.

The thing that struck me most was how *empty* the book felt. Whereas the characters on the TV series have some very close friends, the book doesn't really have that dimension. Sure, people go out with their fabulous acquaintances, but there never really seems to be a true connection among them. Lonliness is nearly a constant with the characters in this book. It left me feeling pretty sad, as well. Yes, it was comical, but it also had a fairly serious side.

For fans of the series, this book is *not* told solely through the eyes of Carrie. The narrator is someone else, a "friend" of Carrie's and the other characters, who does indeed write a newspaper column. Most of the characters in the TV series are in the book by name only -- for example, Charlotte makes an appearance as a journalist with a completely different personality thank Charlotte in the series. And whereas I think most people genuinely like at least one person from the series, I think I finished this book disliking every single character. What did surprise me is that the first episode of the series is nearly verbatim from the book.

What I liked about this book were the vivid scenes and the ability to create a feeling. I think Bushnell did a great job and making her audience feel what the characters feel. While it's not the series, it's certainly worth a read.

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Remember, the TV series was "loosely" based on this book August 16, 2000

By Elizabeth

Format:Paperback

If you are a huge fan of the HBO series, (and if not, why not?), keep in mind that this book does not follow the lives of the four heroines as the show does. Carrie and Mr. Big are largely featured, as are the other ladies to a much lesser extent, but this book does not follow your typical story-telling format. Hardly surprising as it is a collection of articles.

Overall, I found the writing excellent and witty, but the format rather disjointing. It's a fun read with colorful characters. There is no depth to them, but shallow seems to be the key theme in Bushnell's examination of the Manhatten single scene. If you are looking for love in the Big Apple, you may find this book either a) full of helpful hints or b) so depressing you want to run home to Connecticut. I enjoyed it, but it's easy to put down and forget about.