Is There Still Sex in the City?

May 15, 2019
The further adventures of Candace and her man-eating friends. Bushnell (Killing Monica, 2015, etc.) has been mining the vein of gold she hit with Sex and the City (1996) in both adult and YA novels. The current volume, billed as fiction but calling its heroine Candace rather than Carrie, is a collection of commentaries and recounted hijinks (and lojinks) close in spirit to the original. The author tries Tinder on assignment for a magazine, explores "cubbing" (dating men in their 20s who prefer older women), investigates the "Mona Lisa" treatment (a laser makeover for the vagina), and documents the ravages of Middle Aged Madness (MAM, the female version of the midlife crisis) on her clique of friends, a couple of whom come to blows at a spa retreat. One of the problems of living in Madison World, as she calls her neighborhood in the city, is trying to stay out of the clutches of a group of Russians who are dead-set on selling her skin cream that costs $15,000. Another is that one inevitably becomes a schlepper, carrying one's entire life around in "handbags the size of burlap sacks and worn department store shopping bags and plastic grocery sacks....Your back ached and your feet hurt, but you just kept on schlepping, hoping for the day when something magical would happen and you wouldn't have to schlep no more." She finds some of that magic by living part-time in a country place she calls the Village (clearly the Hamptons), where several of her old group have retreated. There, in addition to cubs, they find SAPs, Senior Age Players, who are potential candidates for MNB, My New Boyfriend. Will Candace get one? Sometimes funny, sometimes silly, sometimes quite sad--i.e., an accurate portrait of life in one's 50s.

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August 26, 2019
In this novel, bestselling author Bushnell (Sex and the City) offers an up-close look at the sometimes steamy, sometimes sedentary sex lives of eligible older women navigating the dating market. Divorced and contentedly living alone, narrator Candace receives a call from famed magazine editor Tina Brown, who suggests she get back to dating­, and writing about it. Candace reluctantly agrees (sex—like “cleaning out the gutters”—has been neglected of late). With characteristic wit and piquant humor, Candace travels between her Upper East Side apartment and a small house in the Long Island Hamptons, where she is joined by a set of aging single girlfriends who are also scouting for sex and/or romance. Candace devotes a spicy chapter to “cubbing” (50-plus women dating men in their 20s), but she doesn’t pursue this approach, warning that “cubs” may just be seeking free rent. She does, however, go out with a 31-year-old musician she finds on the dating app Tinder, and dines with a 75-year-old “senior-age player” (SAP), an older single man of means. Many middle-aged men, she observes, prefer dating much younger women, and finding an “age-appropriate” partner isn’t simple (though not, she proves, impossible). Though it may take some effort both online and IRL, many older women, Bushnell’s self-named character asserts, can date and mate with gusto. With its exploration of familiar themes of female friendship and the conundrums of male/female relationships, Bushnell’s clever new work will be adored by fans of Sex and the City and its HBO and film spin-offs.

July 1, 2019
In the mid-1990s, Bushnell's Sex and the City newspaper column turned into the wildly popular cable series about thirtysomething Carrie Bradshaw (her alter ego) and her close friends. Bushnell continues to fictionalizes her experiences as Candace, a turning-60 divorc�e, returns to the dating game, and shares her woes with her friends who are also navigating midlife challenges. Fortunately, Candace keeps her wits and her wit about her, playing with acronyms: IRL (in real life), MAM (middle-aged madness), MNB (my new boyfriend), and MNH (my new husband). There are some sad events (her dad's death and a suicide), but this is primarily a comedy. Her friends urge her to go on a date with Arnold, 75, telling her, You never know. Of course, the problem with ?you never know' is that so often you actually do know, she writes. After telling her she looks surprisingly young and spry for her age, Arnold also asserts that very young women who date older guys are essentially using sex to fuel an expensive-purse addiction. Bushnell is still plenty edgy, funny, and entertaining.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)