hate it or love it

Personally I liked it, Candace Bushnell's Trading Up. Yes, it's sad to say that I'm obsessed enough with the Sex & the City HBO series that I'm willing to read a novel by the author who's books spun into a commercial success. I was actually quite happy during my vacation that I was not required to read fun articles like Francis Fukuyama's "The Neoconservative Movement" or P.R. Kumaraswamy's "India and Israel: Emerging Partnership" and instead sink into "Sex and the Single Mom: Hollywood's Wild Child Grows up Just a Little--Angelina Jolie speaks out on Brad and Jen, Dating a Woman, and Sex as a Single Mom" in Vanity Fair and Melissa Bank's The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing.

Anyway here's my stab at reviewing Bushnell's novel. After reading her first book on which the infamous tv series was based, I was convinced I liked the shows better than her writing. Her books are filled with morbidly despicable characters. Trading Up is no exception, except that it has a plot line, and weirdly enough had me turning the pages waiting for the main character's comeuppance. Basically the book is about an aging manipulative Victoria's Secret model named Janey and her schemes to get to her perceived 'top' of the NYC social heap ... marrying a guy who'll buy her a 30 million dollar apartment like her best friend or become the head of a Hollywood studio, like another party attender. Strangely enough, no matter how much I'm horrified by Bushnell's character's machinations and twisted view of the world I realized a tiny piece of me resonated with Janey's character. She's ambitious, and she won't let much get in the way. Unlike me or maybe you, she doesn't really know what she wants, but sometimes like you and me, she wants what everyone else one has that she doesn't. Possibly the most interesting thing about the novel is that it does not end in Janey's demise, instead, she opens up another world for herself which is pretty miraculous after her short-lived delegation to the bottom of the NYC social heap ... there I spoiled the ending. That's what reviews do anyway.