One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell

From the author's website: Bushnell’s most-recent 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. Decades later, Bushnell’s New Yorkers suffer the same passions as those fictional Manhattanites from eras past: The 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.

Loved it! I went in fairly prejudiced to like it. Sex and the City is one of my all time favorite shows. I liked Lipstick Jungle and 4 Blondes but I wasn't enraptured with Trading Up so I had this little question about whether this was going to be a winner or a dud. It's a winner - a fun peek into New York high society, a teeny little mystery that all gets wrapped up neatly, affairs of the "elegant event" kind and affairs of the "trashy cheat on your spouse" kind. Two characters blog - although they differ from me in that other people actually read their blogs! which leads to a little bit of trouble. (For the record, that would be just one of the many ways those two characters differ from me!) I spent some time trying to decide why this novel where reality is suspended - million dollar homes, lavish lifestyles, cut-throat social climbing - was a great read right after I finished another unbelievable novel (Isle of Palms) and didn't like it. Maybe it's because Isle of Palms was set right here in my backyard so I was less able to suspend reality and enjoy it. But New York I have only visited, and it is such an exciting city so full of energy that really, you believe anything could happen there - even all this crazy stuff! I think it's time to go drink a Cosmopolitan.

This book is my "O" for the A-Z Reading Challenge! Click on the logo to see my progress.





This is one of the books on my list for the Spring Reading Thing 2009. Click on the logo to see the rest of my list.