Four Blondes - Softcover

Candace Bushnell made her reputation as the creator of the hit US TV series Sex and the City, based on her book of the same name (based in turn on her Eros-intensive New York Observer column). In Four Blondes, she returns with a quartet of novellas on her favourite subject--the mating habits of wealthy, sex-, status- and media-obsessed New Yorkers. These are people for whom a million or two does not make you rich, and who consider Louis Vuitton and Prada bare necessities. Janey Wilcox, for example, is a former model who each summer chooses a house in the Hamptons--or rather, picks up a wealthy man with a pricey rental. With one movie in her past, her "lukewarm celebrity was established and she figured out pretty quickly that it could get her things and keep on getting them, as long as she maintained her standards". Yet even Janey eventually realises that what she's getting isn't exactly what she wants. Cecelia, on the other hand, has gotten the ultimate prize: a royal husband. Still, she finds herself descending into paranoia as the Manhattan media circus reports her every flaw. Then there is Winnie Diekes, a high-powered magazine columnist whose marriage flounders as she pushes her unambitious husband to write the book that will make him--and her--famous.

Finally, in the most clearly autobiographical story, a writer gives up on the commitment-impaired men of New York and goes to London to find a husband. There she trawls for the so-called typical Englishman--"a guy who had sex with his socks on, possessed a microscopic willy, and came in two minutes". Bushnell is famous for this sort of sexual brashness, and the book is full of her sharp wit, both in and out of the boudoir. She also clearly enjoys her characters and their misadventures, with one exception: the politically correct Winnie, with her distaste for alcohol, night life, and casual sex, inspires an odd sort of authorial contempt. Otherwise, though, the Bushnell's ironic takes on the sexual foibles of the rich and famous are mordant, mischievous fun. --Lesley Reed

Stiletto-sharp wit and dialogue ... A compulsive read. (OK MAGAZINE)

Extremely funny, but it's a hard-boiled humour with a cruel edge (OBSERVER)

Bushnell is a fabulous writer who captures her world in hard, glittering prose (EVE)