Text and the City

The dark wisdom of Candace Bushnell's One Fifth Avenue

Illustration by Megan Hess for TIME

Candace Bushnell

Candace Bushnell is the Evelyn Waugh of our time. Or she would be if Waugh had been a) a woman and b) a terrible writer. Waugh was a true wit and a master stylist who loved and despised his subjects (the English upper classes) with such a hopeless passion that he ended up capturing them completely. Bushnell does something very similar with rich people in New York City. Just without the wit or the style.

Which is still no mean feat, and One Fifth Avenue (Hyperion; 433 pages) is no mean book, except in the other sense of mean. So far,...

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