Is There Still Sex in the City?
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3.6 • 127 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Twenty years after her sharp, seminal first book Sex and the City reshaped the landscape of pop culture and dating with its fly on the wall look at the mating rituals of the Manhattan elite, the trailblazing Candace Bushnell delivers a new book on the wilds and lows of sex and dating after fifty.
Set between the Upper East Side of Manhattan and a country enclave known as The Village, Is There Still Sex in the City? follows a cohort of female friends—Sassy, Kitty, Queenie, Tilda Tia, Marilyn, and Candace—as they navigate the ever-modernizing phenomena of midlife dating and relationships. There’s “Cubbing,” in which a sensible older woman suddenly becomes the love interest of a much younger man, the “Mona Lisa” Treatment—a vaginal restorative surgery often recommended to middle aged women, and what it’s really like to go on Tinder dates as a fifty-something divorcee. From the high highs (My New Boyfriend or MNBs) to the low lows (Middle Age Madness, or MAM cycles), Bushnell illustrates with humor and acuity today’s relationship landscape and the types that roam it.
Drawing from her own experience, in Is There Still Sex in the City? Bushnell spins a smart, lively satirical story of love and life from all angles—marriage and children, divorce and bereavement, as well as the very real pressures on women to maintain their youth and have it all. This is an indispensable companion to one of the most revolutionary dating books of the twentieth century from one of our most important social commentators.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this novel, bestselling author Bushnell (Sex and the City) offers an up-close look at the sometimes steamy, sometimes sedentary sex lives of eligible older women navigating the dating market. Divorced and contentedly living alone, narrator Candace receives a call from famed magazine editor Tina Brown, who suggests she get back to dating , and writing about it. Candace reluctantly agrees (sex like "cleaning out the gutters" has been neglected of late). With characteristic wit and piquant humor, Candace travels between her Upper East Side apartment and a small house in the Long Island Hamptons, where she is joined by a set of aging single girlfriends who are also scouting for sex and/or romance. Candace devotes a spicy chapter to "cubbing" (50-plus women dating men in their 20s), but she doesn't pursue this approach, warning that "cubs" may just be seeking free rent. She does, however, go out with a 31-year-old musician she finds on the dating app Tinder, and dines with a 75-year-old "senior-age player" (SAP), an older single man of means. Many middle-aged men, she observes, prefer dating much younger women, and finding an "age-appropriate" partner isn't simple (though not, she proves, impossible). Though it may take some effort both online and IRL, many older women, Bushnell's self-named character asserts, can date and mate with gusto. With its exploration of familiar themes of female friendship and the conundrums of male/female relationships, Bushnell's clever new work will be adored by fans of Sex and the City and its HBO and film spin-offs. \n
Customer Reviews
Is There Still Sex in The City?
Fun, quick read!
Candace Bushnell, Relationship Jedi
Watched, read and loved Sex and the City in my 20s-30s, and I continue to worship the ground Candace walks on in my 40s. Never shy about the challenges of intimacy and connection, she writes what I'm thinking but can't say out loud. Her books feel like a friend I can call anytime for comfort, laughter and understanding.
Not Sex in the City redux
“I wonder if she’s disappointed with her life, the way I sometimes am.....And then I calm myself with the mantra that has soothed women for ages when we ask these questions: It’s all about choices . Like we actually have control over our lives.”
Before I begin, I admit I am a big fan of Candace Bushnell’s *writing*, her columns included, and I watched Sex in the City when it went into syndication. However, as her writing proves, HBO took the ideas and rarely the substance of Bushnell’s work to make a series that millions have loved and watched. I’m old enough to recognize the difference. I hope reviewers do the same. This was a library book, I do not own it. I chose to read and review it.
No, this is far from SITC redux. Bushnell’s, in her inevitable manner, brings us into a small group of older women to show how we- and at 62 I claim “membership”- survive in this world of beautiful, monied older women -[note: I live on a fixed income. In this ream, I do not fit in] and how society is learning to treat them, specifically 5 women and Candace, and how, more importantly how they treat themselves, warts and all. This is a brave new world. I challenge readers to look, with Bushnell, at how we accept or reject living in it. Highly recommended 5/5