The SAME year Hollywood wrapped a big happily-ever-after bow around "Sex and the City," the TV and motion picture juggernaut inspired by Candace Bushnell's 1997 collection of essays, Bushnell herself has come out with a book that shows she's got her finger on the pulse of reality.
This is not to say that her new novel, "One Fifth Avenue," isn't escapist literature. It is. Yet here, Bushnell not only focuses on the usual haves and wannabes and the glamorous world they inhabit, but also on the simmering panic that lurks beneath their sense of entitlement.
Most of the action is set in the posh building that is One Fifth Avenue, long a kind of unofficial club for successful artists of every stripe. Bushnell drops an interloper into this creative mix, a super-rich banker with enough hubris to try to take over the stock exchange of a foreign country -- and succeed.
To nobody's surprise, the artists and the banker prove to be an oil and water combination. More unexpected is that the building itself is the real star of the book.
If "Big" is the ultimate catch in "Sex and the City," Bushnell's latest effort replaces alpha males with real estate as the main object of desire.
One Fifth Avenue seduces all who enter, especially the crown jewel in the building -- the spectacular penthouse. When its owner (one of the city's oldest and wealthiest philanthropists) suddenly dies, the empty dream palace she leaves behind impacts directly or indirectly every character in the book.
Bushnell assembles an array of New York types, and one, Billy, serves as the connecting link. With the money and pedigree to get invited to the right parties but not enough of either to feel secure, Billy is the ultimate insider-outsider.
Though not a resident of One Fifth -- he "aches" to be -- he understands every shift in the social order, especially when a new face appears on the scene.
In this book, there are two noteworthy newcomers. The more formidable is Annalisa, smart, married, in her 30s, reminiscent of an updated Babe Paley.
The other is Lola, 22, a pampered, pretty girl who believes her generation is entitled to have their dreams fulfilled right now. As she puts it, "Girls my age won't put up with unhappiness."
A narcissist and an opportunist, Lola believes that in this age of the Internet, reality TV and overnight fame, she's just a lucky break away from satisfaction.
