by Candace Bushnell
The good news is that Bushnell is a deft writer, possessing a sly sense of humor and sharp insight into human behavior. The bad news is that she's writing about a bunch of jaded New Yorkers obsessed with money, status and the night haunt of the moment. While her stories (originally columns in the New York Observer) are entertaining, the white-collar singles who work in the city's financial and publishing industries she reports on have no appeal. Only the character of Carrie, who becomes a stand-in for the author in the later stories, has an attractive self-awareness and vulnerability.
But as a piece of finely wrought anthropology Sex and the City succeeds. Most hilarious is the account of a baby shower in Greenwich, Conn., where Bushnell and several of her single, city girlfriends meet a set of smug suburban wives. In another chapter the author skewers a subspecies of single men with literary pretensions who travel around Manhattan on bicycles as if they are still under-grads. Throughout the book the reader meets women desperate to get married and men unable to commit to nice women who somehow don't measure up looks-wise. It's a harsh and ultimately soulless world Bushnell is describing, but she does it with flair. (Atlantic Monthly Press, $21)
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