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Journalism of Courage
Over four earlier novels, Candace Bushnell has revealed a gift for understanding the quirks of the obscenely superrich. Bushnell8217;s New York never changes: power rules, money talks and nobody ever has enough of anything. Men use women for sex, women use men for money. In Sex and the City, the storyline played out through shoes, more specifically, Manolo Blahnik. Bushnell8217;s fifth book is about real estate, where the characters yearn less for love and ache more for an apartment in a statuesque Art Deacute;cor building in Manhattan, One Fifth Avenue, from where the book derives its title.
The story unfolds when a centenarian New York socialite dies of pneumonia in a rainstorm on her terrace because her servants couldn8217;t locate her in the sprawling 7,000 sq ft apartment 8212; a little Bushnell touch of humour and irony. The socialite8217;s 20 million apartment is suddenly up for sale. All the other characters either live in or want to somehow claw their way into One Fifth Avenue, the address being crucial to build up the kind of life they8217;ve always dreamt of. There8217;s Mindy Gooch, the bitter, self-righteous president of the building board and her fledgling writer-husband, James, both acutely conscious of living in the lousiest apartment in the building. The beautiful actress Schiffer Diamond, revelling in the success of her new TV show, is soft on another occupant of One Fifth, the writer Philip Merle, who is besotted with Lola, a luscious, spoilt, 22-year-old determined to make it in New York in the arms of the right man. The coveted apartment is bought by the socially ambitious, newly moneyed, hedge-fund banker Paul Rice and his demure wife Annalisa. In between the characters of One Fifth moves Billy Litchfield, the sweet but poor fixer, who consoles himself with antidepressants and the observation that after 9/11 8220;it8217;s tacky to wish for anything but world peace8221;.
Yet, Bushnell has a canny style of documenting the lifestyles of the profoundly shallow and the frivolous, and surprises with her subtle, murky undertones. When her characters feel psychically off, they visit a psychopharmacologist a Wikipedia search reveals that is somebody who prescribes psychoactive drugs to monitor mood swings. Though the pace doesn8217;t wane, the book is inexplicably hard to finish. The reference to Bushnell on the back jacket being 8220;Jane Austen with a martini8221; is laughable; her details are sketchy, written by someone not entirely convinced by the greed-versus-happiness argument.
One Fifth Avenue is a book of now, though, with references to Facebook, YouTube and iPhone. Unlike the iconic and flawed Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City, who met Prince Charming to live happily ever after, the scheming occupants of One Fifth are victims of greed and avarice. One can8217;t help but wonder if Bushnell has a moral hidden somewhere. Read it for her tales of fabulous consumption and the lives of the aspirational socialites, which is where Bushnell is truly original.
