Candace Bushnell Week Special Filmbook: "Sex and the City" (2008)

The four women we follow in the new movie "Sex and the City" would be almost unrecognizable to the girls in the book of the same name. The first major change was to clarify all the escapades into four women for the television show; gradually, stakes were introduced that put Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda into positions closer to the women of LIPSTICK JUNGLE than to early Bushnell with the coke and the partying and the... well, singleness. The friends all end the series paired up, and they begin the movie that way, and any fan who believed their men friends would magically disappear probably weren't paying attention.

Still, in their transformation from single and dating to committed or married, they preserved that sense of sisterhood which informed the TV series but not the book. Women sit around talking about sex in SEX AND THE CITY, but it's not central, the men are. The HBO series' thesis which it kept returning to was, Men come and go, but your friends are forever -- something with which viewers like me clearly identified with. (Although to be fair, when I watched the series there were no men coming or going for me.)

Thus I underestimated how moved I would be by this movie, which in essence recycles some very common "women's plots" we've all seen before. Two women are trying to put the spark back into their relationships, one faces a major change to her family and a fourth, Carrie, popularly regarded as a star, is finally marrying Mr. Big, the man she's been with on and off for 10 years. (I'm pro-Big, for the record; he is still a topic of argument.) In a way it was, as other television-shows-turned-movies have not been, strangely comforting to drop back in on these characters' lives and meet them again, for better or for worse. Probably because the film was written and directed by a writer and producer for the show, there was no sense of scrapping the original series ending to make room for unnecessary crisis.

I'm being vague because so much of this movie was not spoiled for me, and I'm hesitant to spoil it for anyone else. Suffice to say, if this is the direction Bushnell's work has wandered, then it ought to stay there; there was a sense of real emotion that drove the characters in this movie to support each other which I never felt from any of her books.

Filmbook verdict: See the movie (if you like the show). Read the book (if you REALLY like the show).

Candace Bushnell Week: Changing My Name To Victory

I'm not really going to rename myself after one of the three fortysomething heroines of Candace Bushnell's rather pedestrian fourth novel, LIPSTICK JUNGLE. If I wanted to emulate any of these three best friends who happen to be three wildly successful women in present-day Manhattan, I would pick Nico anyway, because she's the editor-in-chief. Not that her life bears more resemblance to mine than Wendy, the movie producer's or Victory, the fashion designer's.

At least these women, unlike stereotypical chick-lit stars, have jobs they care about and are desperate to fight for (Wendy is supervising her pet film, Nico is plotting her ascent to the top of a giant media conglomerate and Victory is weighing some attractive offers from other fashion houses). How desperate is well demonstrated, not put to words, until the last third of the book, where Bushnell inserts some very ham-handed dialogue about women and men, careers and family, love and business. Maybe you, dear readers, have had someone say to you in casual conversation, "The successful woman gives up her career for her children and everyone feels good. But it's not really practical in life, is it?" It hasn't happened to me.

LIPSTICK JUNGLE is not as wry or as well written as the other books, but it was definitely more of a page-turner. Still, Bushnell has this narrative trick she uses throughout the book which really drove me crazy. She would end a chapter on a character about to do something -- say, go to St. Barts for the weekend -- and then start the next section with her on the plane back and narrating everything which had just happened. A few times was fine, but after a while I began to feel like I was missing all the action in this book. But I got a little chuckle when she referred to a New York publishing company as "Ratz Neste." Oh boy, it sure is.

Candace Bushnell Week: All That And A Pony

When I found out Janey Wilcox, one of the blondes of 4 BLONDES, was the protagonist of Candace Bushnell's next book TRADING UP, I was not looking forward to the ride. Indeed, we pick up while she is engaged in nearly the same activity -- hunting rich men in the Hamptons -- in the opening of the book. Hearing about a model's struggle to survive and attempts to be taken seriously just didn't appeal to this non-model nerd.

Well, TRADING UP isn't my new favorite book still, but I think I underestimated Janey. I had written her off, but if I could compare her to one character in literature, she's really a Scarlett O'Hara type. (I'll pause while my sister, who loves GONE WITH THE WIND, decides what she wants to throw at me.) Janey may appear oblivious to everything but she's thrashing and kicking like crazy underneath to improve her social standing, marry a millionaire (which she does, even though he's completely wrong for her) and to appear untroubled in everything. Central to her plan is cozying up to a socialite named Mimi, something she comes to regret when they both fall for the same man. She also has to support her sister Patty, a minor character in 4 BLONDES whose marriage to a rock star leads to a tabloid ambush.

Lie, cheat, steal or kill, she won't let herself go and she won't move back to wherever she's from. And like Scarlett, sometimes all I could feel towards her was relief that I don't live in that world.

Earlier: Eleven Years After "Sex" and 2 Blondes 2 Many

Tomorrow: I find out what the heck a LIPSTICK JUNGLE is. Sunday: A Filmbook review of "Sex and the City," the movie, with special spoilery comments in case you cannot be bribed to see it.

Candace Bushnell Week: 2 Blondes 2 Many

I found the 2001 novel 4 BLONDES, when I picked it up, is actually a collection of four novellas, which made me think: Who writes novellas any more? I'm joking, of course; plenty of authors still write them (like Rick Moody, whose last book RIGHT LIVELIHOODS contained three of them). But it wouldn't be unjust to describe the format as neither here nor there -- too long to be collected in bulk or published in a magazine, too short to stand in a book on their own.

The four blondes here all exist in the same universe -- upper-class cultured Manhattan -- and occasionally characters cross among them, but they inhabit different spheres within that universe. In "Nice N'Easy," model Janey's several summers in the Hamptons force her to consider the next step in her career. Winnie in "Highlights (For Adults)" is a columnist who is unhappy in her marriage but unwilling to jettison it entirely if it means not being able to accomplish other goals. In "Platinum," heiress Cecilia believes she's being controlled by a former best friend and in "Single Process," a journalist goes to London to see how they date "over there."

As you probably guessed, I liked two of these novellas more than the others, but I liked 4 BLONDES overall. It definitely made me think, although in a different way from SEX AND THE CITY. It reminded me of one of my favorite books, the '50s career-girl novel THE BEST OF EVERYTHING by Rona Jaffe, in which three friends in New York City struggle with their jobs and their men. There's that same idea of all of them reaching for something better, whether it's landing a British guy or writing a screenplay. These women may only be temporarily distracted by the magic of $400 shoes; they clearly have a goal in mind.

My favorite blonde was Winnie, the career-driven married woman, and I found myself moved by Cecilia's plight despite her privilege. Janey of "Nice N'Easy" annoyed me, but I still wanted to find out what happens to her. (Which is good, because she's in the next book, TRADING UP.) "Platinum" and "Single Process" are both written in the first person, but that final novella is shorter than the others and feels a little tacked on. Still, I tore through this book on the train back from D.C. and if you like chick lit, give it a try.

Tomorrow: Janey returns in TRADING UP, and Friday, LIPSTICK JUNGLE.

Earlier: 11 Years After "Sex"

Candace Bushnell Week: Eleven Years After "Sex"

Remember how it was just Memorial Day? Yeah, that happened! And I failed to blog about it, and now it is over. Short answer, I'm still reading the Review Book of Giantness, although I see the light at the end of that 900-page tunnel. But we will move forever forward into Candace Bushnell Week.

Last year the New York Observer, a weekly arts and culture paper here in NYC, began re-running Candace Bushnell's original pieces from when she was their sex and love columnist. Nowadays we know the television show that sprung from them, "Sex and the City," but I was struck by the very different tone the columns have as collected in the book, SEX AND THE CITY.

This book bears very clearly the marks of having come from a newspaper column, one that was driven by topics which change from week to week. There really isn't a linear story except with Carrie and Big, for which Bushnell provides a definite beginning, middle and end. The episodes are anthropological rather than narrative, dealing with "issues" in the New York dating scene like vacations for couples (they never work), threesomes (apparently many men want them?) and Bicycle Boys (a particular species of immature male). Some of them I found curiously applicable, others not so much, but I enjoyed the collection all in all.

Some stray observations:

• In the show, we follow the adventures (primarily) of four characters. The book has many more characters, some of whom share the names of their fictional counterparts, but there is also the unnamed narrator who herself goes on bad dates, makes mistakes and has adventures. I guess this character is closest to Carrie, because she's a sex columnist just like Bushnell was.

• If possible, there's even less emotion tied to the sex in this book than in the show. Most married couples are broken off in a one-sentence aside right after their mentions; a trip to Westchester County to a baby shower, where four New York City singles are surrounded by happily married women and their children, is colored by a little longing and a whole lot of disdain. But most of them don't seem that eager to settle down, not even the character named Charlotte (who, in the TV version, is the most conservative, marriage-seeking one of the four friends).
  

• These women do not date using the personals. They don't bother going on Match.com (if indeed it even existed back then, it must've been pretty embryonic). This world is pretty foreign to me; I know more than one couple whose relationship began via Craigslist. It seems almost quaint to go back to blind dates.

• Another thing foreign to me: I am normally not bothered by this, but holy cow were there a lot of drugs in this book. I had expected to find that HBO had toned down the sex in this book for the show; I had not expected that in nearly every chapter someone is snorting or smoking something. I do neither and far be it from me to keep people from indulging in their illegal vices -- my favorite one is drinking coffee on the subway, did you know you can get a ticket for that? -- but there would have been even more outrage at the creators of "Sex and the City" had they kept all that in. (Though there was that one episode where all of the girls get high, it's tinged in a kind of sweet nostalgia -- Oh, they're just having fun, smoking a little pot, no one being harmed.) Maybe I'm just sheltered because I don't normally see people doing coke when I'm out, but... wow. Just wow. Feel free to tell me how naive I am anonymously in the comments.

Tomorrow, la bella novella and 2001's 4 BLONDES. Thursday we'll follow one of those blondes in her adventures in 2003's TRADING UP, and Friday we will fight through the LIPSTICK JUNGLE. Plus, a special Saturday Filmbook of "Sex and the City: The Movie." Goodness, is it pink in here, or is it just me?

Reading on the Road: Washington D.C.

I'm off to our nation's capital to see my brother compete in a high school tournament, and I couldn't be prouder. Good luck, Max! (He thinks blogs are silly, but that's okay.)

By the time you read this I will already be on the train and probably deep into a chapter. This is where the Goodreads system of having a rankable to-do list breaks down a bit, because I don't want to lug any library books or hardcovers, and maybe a 96-pager is not the best use of my book-space. But here's what I'm bringing:

Candace Bushnell, 4 BLONDES -- for the forthcoming Candace Bushnell week.
Elizabeth Noble, THINGS I WANT MY DAUGHTERS TO KNOW -- One of my book party finds (in advance review copy form). I have two sisters and I'm meeting my mom in D.C., so it may be a bittersweet read.
Jonathan Coe, THE RAIN BEFORE IT FALLS (also an ARC) -- Marjorie lent this to me! Hey, Marjorie! I haven't forgotten.
Review book for EDGE New York: Lewis DeSimone's CHEMISTRY.

I'm also bringing my mom's belated Mother's Day gift of two books, so I'm just 2 volumes away from being a Tom Stoppard. And I'll only be gone Saturday and Sunday... sheesh.