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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
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Searching... | 33000000016759 | PS3568.O3152 O54 2008 | Open Access Book | Gift Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
One Fifth Avenue, the Art Deco beauty towering over Manhattan's hippest neighbourhood, is a one-of-a-kind address, the sort of building you have to earn your way into - one way or another.
For the women in Candace Bushnell's stellar new novel, One Fifth Avenue is at the heart of the lives they've carefully established, or hope to establish. There is Schiffer Diamond, a forty-something actress busily proving that women of style are truly ageless. There is spoiled, self-assured Lola, who is determined to launch herself into society and the arms of the right man by clawing a way into the building. Annalisa is the wife of a hedge fund manager and reluctant socialite, while bitter Mindy is married to an under-published writer and has been the family breadwinner for too long. And then there is Enid, the glamorous grande dame and gossip columnist, who has lived at One Fifth Avenue for decades, and sees everything there is to see from her penthouse view . . .
Author Notes
Candace Bushnell was born in Glastonbury, Connecticut on December 1, 1958. She attended Rice University and New York University. She worked as a freelancer and wrote pieces about women, relationships and dating for Mademoiselle, Self Magazine, and Esquire. In 1993, she began writing for the New York Observer and in November 1994, she created the column Sex and the City, which ran in the New York Observer for two years. The column was turned into a book in 1996, became a hit television series, and a blockbuster movie. She is also the author of 4 Blondes (2000), Trading Up (2003), Lipstick Jungle (2005), One Fifth Avenue (2008), The Carrie Diaries (2010), Summer and the City (2011), and Killing Monica (2105). She received the 2006 Matrix Award for books and the Albert Einstein Spirit of Achievement Award.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews 3
Publisher's Weekly Review
Sex in the City goes middle-aged, mordant and slapstick in Bushnell's chronicle of writers, actors and Wall Street whizzes clashing at One Fifth Avenue, a Greenwich Village art deco jewel crammed with regal rich, tarty upstarts and misguided lovers. When a Queen of Society dies, a vicious scramble for her penthouse apartment ensues, and it's attorney Annalisa and her hedge-funder husband, Paul Rice, who land the palatial pad, roiling the building's rivalries. There's Billy Litchfield, an art dealer who slobbers over the wealthy; strivers Mindy and James Gooch, and their tech-savvy 13-year-old Sam, the most hilariously bitter (and strangely successful) family in the building; gossip columnist Enid Merle and her screenwriter nephew, Philip Oakland, who struggle to uphold traditions and their souls; actress Schiffer Diamond, who lands a hit TV series, and her old love; and Lola Fabrikant, a cunning Atlanta gold digger whose greatest ambition is to become Carrie Bradshaw. 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. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
It was part of the pain of living in Manhattan, this overwhelming ache for prime real estate, writes Bushnell in her first novel since Lipstick Jungle (2005). Two events throw the inhabitants of One Fifth Avenue, Manhattan's ritziest address, into a tizzy: the return of beautiful actress Schiffer Diamond, and the death of Louise Houghton, who owned the building's swankiest apartment. Gossip columnist Enid Merle and her dashing nephew Philip Oakland think Louise's now-available three-story apartment should be divided up, while ambitious Mindy Gooch, whose husband is on the cusp of literary stardom, wants it sold to a high bidder. Mindy gets her way, and nouveau riche couple Paul and Annalisa snap it up for $15 million. But when Mindy refuses to let Paul install a wall-unit air conditioner, he declares war, inciting a conflict that draws in all the residents of the building. Other characters include a scheming Lolita type who tries to sleep her way into One Fifth and a penniless male socialite who has aspired to One Fifth for decades. Devotees of Bushnell's megahit Sex in the City and fans of New York-aimed satire will enjoy this scathing all's-fair-in-real-estate novel.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2008 Booklist
Library Journal Review
New York Observer columnist-turned-New York Times best-selling novelist Bushnell (www.candacebushnell.com) here writes of a single New York City apartment building and the machinations of the women who live in it, want to live in it, and eventually leave it-one way or another. There are some jumps in narrative flow in this abridged edition, but Tonyr Award winner Donna Murphy (www.donnamurphy.com) perfectly voices this microcosm of women's lives. Recommended for public libraries. [Audio clip available through www.hyperionbooks.com; unabridged library-edition CD and digital download available from Books on Tape, with Carrington MacDuffie reading; the Hyperion hc was called "Bushnell at her best," LJ 9/1/08.-Ed.]-Beth Traylor, Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libs. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
