Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #333800 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-07
• Released on: 2002-03-07
• Original language: French
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 286 pages

From Amazon.com
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.

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.

From Library Journal
Bushnell extracts some gems from her "Sex and the City" column in the New York Observer, which has a devoted following. But will it play in Peoria?
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

THERE IS SOMETHING BETTER!
Look. Seriously, now. If you like the show or the book even a little bit, you realllllly need to investigate books by Cynthia Heimel. Heimel was the original and she remains the best. She's smarter and funnier and a thousand times more interesting than Candace Bushnell or Carrie Bradshaw. Heimel is a little grittier than SATC. She's weak for shoes and designer clothes but she lives strictly in the real world. Please, please PLEASE read "Sex Tip For Girls" or "But Enough About You" or "If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet" if you want to see what Candace Bushnell is DESPERATELY TRYING to do! Try Heimel once. You'll never read Bushnell again. You're welcome!

Columnist not novelist
Articles made short & sweet (or sour), quirky interest every week written by a columnist for the New York Observer. These in turn were collected & became a book sold in the women's cultural study, non-fiction section of the bookstore. One can see where the characters for the TV show were created but Sex & the City is not a novel, no thought out flowing plot, only the weekly articles Bushnell created for the amusement of New Yorkers about the how the other half lives. It's not that raunchy, not that pretty, it's pretty sad actually (for the people she writes about). The style is that of a columnist not a novelist, so don't expect the TV show only the basic elements for the show lie hidden within...

Sex and the City
What a letdown this book turned out to be! It bears almost no resemblance to the TV series which I love so much. The writing is rambling and confusing, and the characters are very shallow and superficial--totally lacking in warmth, humanity, and credibility. The script writers were geniuses to make the TV series as good as it was, since Candace Bushnell gave them so little material to work with. Putting SJP on the cover as Carrie is deceptive advertising as far as I'm concerned.