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Overview
"One Fifth Avenue, the Art Deco beauty towering over one of Manhattan's oldest and most historically hip neighborhoods, 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 new novel, One Fifth Avenue, this edifice is essential to the lives they've carefully established - or hope to establish. From the hedge fund king's wife to the aging gossip columnist to the free-spirited actress (a recent refugee from L.A.), each person's game plan for a rich life comes together under the soaring roof of this landmark building." This book is a modern-day story of old and new money, that same combustible mix that Edith Wharton mastered in her novels about New York's Gilded Age and F. Scott Fitzgerald illuminated in his Jazz Age tales. Many decades later, Bushnell's New Yorkers suffer the same passions as those fictional Manhattanites from eras past: They thirst for power, for social prominence, and for marriages that are successful - at least to the public eye. But Bushnell is an original, and One Fifth Avenue is so fresh that it reads as if sexual politics, real estate theft, and fortunes lost in a day have never happened before.Synopsis
Where your zip code is as important as your handbag . . .
Another look at the tough and tender women of New York City from Candace Bushnell, the author of Sex and the City, Trading Up, and Lipstick Jungle. In One Fifth Avenue, Bushnell tells the intertwined stories of five women at one swanky Manhattan address.
One Fifth is the building - the chicest, the hottest, the one with the best pedigree. And within its gorgeous pre-war walls, fortunes fall and rise in the early days of the new millennium. Here, as in her previous novels, Bushnell turns a gimlet eye on the social and sexual politics of New York's elite, this time through the lens of where they live.
The Washington Post - Claudia Deane
One Fifth Avenue is definitely not a book to read for plot…This is a book you read because it takes some of the challenges of modern, middle-age urban life and has the characters try to meet them amid a swirl of heliports and Hamptons visits, and because Bushnell has a track record of channeling the N.Y.C. zeitgeist.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Admit it: You love gossip. Nobody on this planet dishes it better than Candace Bushnell, the sassy author who guided us through Sex and the City, Four Blondes, Trading Up, and Lipstick Jungle. In One Fifth Avenue, she checks in at a landmark Manhattan address to reveal the upscale lives of its diverse tenants. Their money is old or new; their careers on the rise or in full retreat; their motives reckless or greedy; but no apartment building's Art Deco façade can hide their secrets from the deliciously prying eyes of tattletale Bushnell. High-rise entertainment; scandalous fun.Claudia Deane
One Fifth Avenue is definitely not a book to read for plot…This is a book you read because it takes some of the challenges of modern, middle-age urban life and has the characters try to meet them amid a swirl of heliports and Hamptons visits, and because Bushnell has a track record of channeling the N.Y.C. zeitgeist.—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
Bushnell's latest offering tells the tale of a group of female Manhattanites who live out, or dream of living out, their fantasies in the Art Deco tower of One Fifth Avenue. The prose is reminiscent of the typical Bushnell drawl, which became so popular in Sex and the City. Although the writing is somewhat familiar, narrator Donna Murphy is refreshing in her inspired reading. Murphy displays a talent for interpreting characters on the page and giving them rich, textured voices and personalities that make listening a sheer pleasure. Though the story lacks originality, Murphy's performance brings a certain theatrical atmosphere to the tale, making it an enjoyable, visual listen. A Hyperion hardcover (Reviews, July 28).(Oct.)
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New York Observer columnist-turned-New York Times best-selling novelist Bushnell (
—Beth Traylor