Book Review: One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell

One Fifth Avenue

by Candace Bushnell

I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I say Candace Bushnell is still the world's most celebrated sex columnist. She fashioned her insightful New York Observer columns into the book Sex and the City, which became reincarnated as a deservingly popular and entertaining TV show. Our ideas about Bushnell may be shaped by the engaging TV series, but as a writer she's more sober and more serious than we might expect from the HBO show alone. Her prose is straightforward but not as finely crafted as her plots.

One Fifth Avenue (2008) is a novel set in a prime piece of New York City real estate, albeit the real address has been fictionalized. Like Lipstick Jungle, the book is full of strong female personalities. The men are once again less interesting. Nowhere is there much psychological depth.

Still, it's a fairly complex tale interweaving the various loves, intrigues, careers, and egos of those who live in or wish they could live in this landmark building. To her credit, Bushnell has let her characters age along with her and quite a few of them here are in their mid-forties. Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly given Bushnell's changing perspective, the twenty-somethings don't come off very well in the novel at all. No one in fact is particularly nice, and it's not easy to relate to most of the characters. The result is that we really don't care all that much. Bushnell has at least five of her characters writing for one medium or another, but even she doesn't seem to empathize with any of those practicing her craft.

In the end, we are asked to believe that fate has a way of giving nasty folks their comeuppance. We are told that couples who have really good sex should find a way to spend their lives together. And we learn once again that money can't buy happiness, but it can buy real estate.


Note:  I have other book reviews posted here.

Election Day is tomorrow. The relevant blog posts are here.

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Book Review: Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse

Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse

It has occasionally been noted that P. G. Wodehouse's novels, including even his much later ones, all seem to be set in the bucolic 1920's.  I would add to that the observation that Piccadilly Jim, a book first serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1916 during the first World War and subsequently published in the U.S. in 1917 and in the U.K. in 1918, already seems to anticipate the impossibly carefree attitude of the 1920's rather than the harsh realities of its own time. 

The several transatlantic crossings in the story are presented with no topical mention of either the Titanic which famously struck an iceberg in 1912 or of the Lusitania which was sunk by a German U-Boat in 1915.  In fact, the most serious problem alluded to regarding crossing the Atlantic is, as you might guess, sea-sickness.

In the middle of World War I, Wodehouse has already invented his own benign world mostly untroubled by war and other serious calamities.  The sole reference to war here, in fact, is a newly-invented but farcically-untested explosive which various unnamed and unscrupulous governments may be interested in illicitly acquiring even without knowing if it actually works.

The 1920's were doubtless a boon to Wodehouse's delightful writing, but I think he may have been well on his way to inventing them before they just happened to come along. 

Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse, Dodd, Mead & Company (1917), First Printing (USA)

http://www.facsimiledustjackets.com/cgi-bin/fdj455/5245.html?id=DtAsoqGs

Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse
 Herbert Jenkins Limited (1918)
 First Printing, 2/6 Net (UK)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PiccadillyJim.jpg

Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse, Herbert Jenkins Limited (1918), 1931 Reprint 5/- Net (UK)

http://www.facsimiledustjackets.com/cgi-bin/fdj455/6401.html?id=DtAsoqGs

Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse, Herbert Jenkins Limited (1918), 6/- Net Reprint (UK)

http://www.facsimiledustjackets.com/cgi-bin/fdj455/5246.html?id=DtAsoqGs

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The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory

The Other Queen  (2008)
Philippa Gregory

After reading The Other Boleyn Girl, I supposed I had read Philippa Gregory's best work and that her other novels would seem weak by comparison. I am therefore delighted to find The Other Queen to be such a superbly entertaining book.

The engrossing story is set during the captivity of Mary, Queen of Scots during the reign of Elizabeth I. Mary is the "other queen" of the title, with a legitimate claim to the thrones of Scotland and England.

Three characters take turns narrating the story, so the perspective is always changing as the plot moves forward. As a literary device, it sounds a bit awkward perhaps, but I thought Gregory managed the three voices exceedingly well. The narrators are Bess of Hardwick, her newlywed fourth husband George the Earl of Shrewsbury, and their captive guest Mary the Scots Queen.

Philippa Gregory is very good at characterization. She writes reasonable dialogue, but it's not really convincing as period dialogue. The court's machinations and intrigue are palpable; other more mundane historical details are sparse.

The Other Queen (2008)
Philippa Gregory

Image added April 10, 2013



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