Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Book Review: "Lipstick Jungle" Candace Bushnell

This is the last of my 6-for-$1.00 thrift store vacation books. (So, if I dropped it in the pool, no problem.) I actually bought this one for my daughter, but I ran out of other books and she hadn't gotten to it yet.

The fact that Candace Bushnell is the author of Sex and the City was not a selling point for me. I don't identify with that demographic.  I read the book, however, and found myself enjoying it. While I don't truly relate to the uber rich, sophisticated fashionistas depicted in the book, I do recall the bumps and bruises that life dishes out to a woman in her forties.

The Forties is sort of the new adolescence: A time when you learn that all the things you thought about being "grown up" are crap and life's still not fair but it does occasionally careen madly between the Slough of Despond and fabulous.

The women who populate this book are successful beyond my wildest imaginings (materially speaking), but they have the same insecurities and disappointments in their husbands, kids, parents, bosses and co-workers as the rest of us. The three women's lives are lived at a full-out, precipice-hugging level that made me dizzy, but they still feel insecure about husbands and boyfriends. Their kids alternately send them to the ozone with pride and over the brink of despair.  Husbands are largely more trouble than they're worth.  Bosses are only slightly less trustworthy.

They never, ever experience disappointments or insecurity in their relationships with their True Blue (BFF) Girlfriends. 

It was a fun read with fashion, exotic locations, fabulous clothes (and shoes) and the triumph female friendships for career women at the apex of their professions.

It made me want to stand up and sing "I am Woman, Hear Me Roar".

Well, maybe not. But, it was fun.

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