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One Fifth Avenue

Audiobook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
One Fifth Avenue, the Art Deco beauty towering over one of Manhattan’s oldest and most historically hip neighborhoods, is a one-of-a-kind address, the sort of building you have to earn your way into–one way or another. For the women in Candace Bushnell’s new novel, One Fifth Avenue, this edifice is essential to the lives they’ve established–or hope to establish. From the hedge fund king’s wife to the aging gossip columnist to the free-spirited actress (a recent refugee from L.A.), each person’s game plan for a rich life is realized under the soaring roof of this landmark building.
Acutely observed and mercilessly witty, One Fifth Avenue is a modern-day story of old and new money, the always combustible mix that Edith Wharton mastered in her novels about New York’s Gilded Age and that F. Scott Fitzgerald illuminated in his Jazz Age tales. Decades later, Bushnell’s New Yorkers suffer the same passions as those fictional Manhattanites from eras past: They thirst for power, for social prominence, and for marriages that are successful–at least to the public eye. But Bushnell is an original, and One Fifth Avenue is so fresh that it reads as if sexual politics, real estate theft, and fortunes lost in a day have never happened before.
From Sex and the City through four successive novels, Bushnell has revealed a gift for tapping into the zeitgeist of any New York minute. Her stories progress so nimbly and ring so true that it can seem as if anyone might write them–when, in fact, no one writes novels quite like Candace Bushnell.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 28, 2008
      Sex in the City
      goes middle-aged, mordant and slapstick in Bushnell's chronicle of writers, actors and Wall Street whizzes clashing at One Fifth Avenue, a Greenwich Village art deco jewel crammed with regal rich, tarty upstarts and misguided lovers. When a “Queen of Society” dies, a vicious scramble for her penthouse apartment ensues, and it's attorney Annalisa and her hedge-funder husband, Paul Rice, who land the palatial pad, roiling the building's rivalries. There's Billy Litchfield, an art dealer who slobbers over the wealthy; strivers Mindy and James Gooch, and their tech-savvy 13-year-old Sam, the most hilariously bitter (and strangely successful) family in the building; gossip columnist Enid Merle and her screenwriter nephew, Philip Oakland, who struggle to uphold traditions and their souls; actress Schiffer Diamond, who lands a hit TV series, and her old love; and Lola Fabrikant, a cunning Atlanta gold digger whose greatest ambition is to become Carrie Bradshaw. Here are bloggers and bullies, misfits and misanthropes, dear hearts and black-hearts, dogfights and catty squalls spun into a darkly humorous chick-lit saga.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This is SEX AND THE CITY--for seniors. One Fifth Avenue is the ultimate NYC address, so when its 7,000-square-foot penthouse becomes vacant--through the bizarre death of its nearly 100-year-old owner--the tenants, present, future, and past, clamor for the space. However, even a narrator as skilled as Donna Murphy can't keep all the voices straight. But shifting from pathos to bitchiness to mirth, Murphy tries to capture them all. Best moment--the vulgar, drunken wake. Best character--Lola Fabricant, an Atlanta gold digger who strives to be Carrie Bradshaw of SEX AND THE CITY. This is worth a listen while doing meaningless chores but not something that will linger long in the mind. M.T.B. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 24, 2008
      Bushnell's latest offering tells the tale of a group of female Manhattanites who live out, or dream of living out, their fantasies in the Art Deco tower of One Fifth Avenue. The prose is reminiscent of the typical Bushnell drawl, which became so popular in Sex and the City
      . Although the writing is somewhat familiar, narrator Donna Murphy is refreshing in her inspired reading. Murphy displays a talent for interpreting characters on the page and giving them rich, textured voices and personalities that make listening a sheer pleasure. Though the story lacks originality, Murphy's performance brings a certain theatrical atmosphere to the tale, making it an enjoyable, visual listen. A Hyperion hardcover (Reviews, July 28).

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  • English

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