By
Vanessa Francis
Arizona Daily Wildcat
"Sex and the City" scribe Candace Bushnell pens book about sex in New York
Grade: B+
Candace Bushnell paints a fantasy world for her audience. She paints a world where martini cocktails are served nightly, summers are spent exclusively in the Hamptons and the luggage is always Louis Vuitton.
Bushnell knows best about upper class sex, as a former sex and lifestyle columnist for the New York Post and author of the book "Sex and the City". The hit HBO comedy series is an adapted compilation of Bushnell's columns.
She likes to name drop, and does it often in her newest novel "Four Blondes." The book, unlike "Sex and the City," is four separate vignettes about four separate women - all blondes who clothe themselves exclusively in Gucci and Prada.
As demonstrated by the leading blondes of the book, Bushnell has a gift for character development - a surprising feat for a New York newspaper columnist.
The second vignette, "Highlights (For Adults)," is by far the best in the book. It follows a high-powered married couple- the journalists James and Winnie Dieke. The writing style is superior to that of the other stories, as Bushnell portrays both of the characters' thoughts eloquently with cutting, sarcastic dialogue filled with social commentary.
The story chronicles the near-demise of the couple's marriage through twists and turns of the supporting characters, including a Hollywood actor and Winnie's power-hungry younger sister.
The third story, "Platinum," is a contrived piece of fiction about a Princess Grace-styled Manhattan socialite who marries into royalty. Princess Cecilia is corrupted by an absentee hippie mother and the plethora of mood-altering drugs she consumes daily. Additionally, her idol is none other than anorexia victim Karen Carpenter.
The final story, "Single Process," reads much like "Sex and the City" plays, but set in London. It is modeled after Bushnell's original column-style writing, about a (suprise) New York journalist writing about the sex patterns of the single adults in the night club world.
The unnamed lead character travels to London to compare and contrast the sex patterns of prissy Englishmen to those of head-case New Yorkers.
Whereas Bushnell's characters are fun to read - like the gossipy page six of the New York Post where her fictional characters are often mentioned - the stories lack any serious plot. She seems to give up by the end of each vignette, and quickly wraps each up.
Moreover, the superficiality of Bushnell's fiction could be overlooked if either section contained a climactic moment, but none of them did.
The vignettes read like a gossip column, with characters who are most likely modeled after real-life socialites. The women in all of Bushnell's work give new meaning to the idea of feminists, as women who trade one-night stands for the material possessions those men buy them.
The characters go where most of us can only fantasize about - the Cannes film festival, castles in Germany and the exclusive Helena Rubenstein salon. These fair-haired ladies all exhibit the perfect exchange for sex and money, but without the prostitute label.
"Four Blondes" is a fun read, but not a stretch for what Bushnell usually composes. If she is to dodge the inevitable type-casting label, she should probably begin writing on the topic of something rather than meaningless sexcapades of idle and wealthy New Yorkers.
