In a way, Candace Bushnell's Lipstick Jungle picks up where her career-defining book Sex and the City left off, in the money-soaked, power-hungry, beauty-obsessed jungle that is New York City. This time around, the ladies are a bit older, a lot richer, but not particularly wiser nor more endearing than Bushnell's earlier heroines.This racy tale of women behaving badly manages to shrewdly flip the tables to show us how gender roles are essentially interchangeable, given the right circumstances. Whether that was Bushnell's intent when crafting this wicked tale is another story. --Gisele Toueg
When I found out Janet had read One Fifth Avenue, I was immediately excited to read the other Candace Bushnell book, Lipstick Jungle.
ReplyDeleteAs owner and lover of three previous books by Candace, Sex and the City, Four Blondes, and Trading Up, I was eager to find out what Candace had to portray in this book. I noted she liked to take some characters from previous books, and continue their story on into her newest novels. While you do not need to read previous novels to follow the story line, it is nice to see how her characters have developed and what happened (and still is happening) to them.
As is apparent from her previous books (minus One Fifth Studio, for which I have not read so I cannot included that book in my associations) that the main theme is women having power and women struggling through a “Man Driven” world to get on top.
In Lipstick Jungle, three, rich, powerful friends try to prove to the world that women can have it all. They set out to not only “own the world” by being successful business women, but they can be married, have children, and yet be happy with it all.
There are events of a divorce, affairs, deceit, finding true happiness, boring marriages, of course what is a novel without great intense sex? It is also neat to see the ages of these women are in their 40’s, and are not young, vibrant, often time naïve young girls trying to make their mark in the world. They have a mature and knowing sense of it all. It was refreshing.
Victory, a hip, out of the box, fashion designer, Nico, a creative magazine editor for a very popular and trendy magazine, and Wendy, a thoughtful, hard working movie producer struggle through this book to fight for feminism in the business world, but can they fight through the very apparent macho-ism in this world to “get their cake, and eat it too?”
While I personally like being a stay at home mother and enjoy my husband working, this book does not degrade that option. It is saying that women should be able to do what they want, whether their job is a stay at home mom, or president of a big cooperation. I see in the school system (I am also a teacher [someday will be again in the school system]), that “they” portray that girls cannot do certain jobs, because that is what boys do. I also think that Candace hit on some very true points in Lipstick Jungle. There are stereotypes in this world. While being a leader in a business is not for me, it definitely is for some women. I would hope one day that both men and women can “be” what they want to be.
I personally love Candace Bushnell as an author, and would recommend this book to anyone!
I also enjoyed this book, and feel that you give a good interpretation of the story. Did you find that it ended with loose ends? I kind of felt that way...maybe to create the sense that the womens' stories are not complete? It has been awhile since I have read this so I may be off, but was wondering what you thought.
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