Rating: 
Summary: Great fun, and it sounds realistic!
Review: This book is very well written, witty and entertaining; in my limited experience, it also sounds realistic. The reader shouldn't expect a sociological or psychological study, since the book concentrates on a very small group of women which is hardly representative of any significant female group; on the other hand, the anecdotes are recounted with understanding, wit and sympathy and they do offer interesting insights. Most of the main characters seem fairly insecure but substantially nice - I wonder how realistic THAT is! I recommend this book, very nice read.
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Summary: The Big Apple has worms!
Review: I enjoyed the easy read of this book. I must admit I bought the book after seeing the Showtime series. Although the book details a very small substrata of New York, it presents an insiders view to something you always knew existed. Insecure people with too much money! It is like a literary Los Angeles scene. Instead of movie stars you have writers, brokers, journalists, and eurotrash. It was a nice escape.
Rating: 
Summary: Emotionally Disturbed-Party of One, your table is ready!
Review: Being a serious student of literature, this book made me feel guilty for reading it. It is the equivalent of watching soap operas while devouring a carton of Ben & Jerry's, or lying on your belly with your ear pressed against the heating vent trying to overhear your neighbors sordid affair with her brother-in-law. It leaves you with a (simultaneous) feeling of both horror (you can't believe you're still reading the thing), and of real self worth (thankful that you succesfully graduated high school - mentally - when you were supposed to...). Yet for some reason (read: train wreck - for example) you can't keep your eyes off of it. I kept waiting for a moment of self revelation (from anyone) up until the abrupt and unconclusive ending. Although, I'm sad to admit, in some sick way, it did cause me to giggle a little.
Rating: 
Summary: Shallow People Make For Shallow Books
Review: Bushnell writes about a particularly sad sub-species of New Yorker-- gold-digging tramps and the insecure model-chasing men they chase after. Saddest is that these people aren't 22, where that sort of juvenile behavior might be excuseable, but 30 and 40 something. And so the main emotion they invoke is pity. AND PLEASE, PEOPLE, THE CHARACTERS IN THIS BOOK ARE BY NO MEANS REPRESENTATIVE OF MOST NEW YORKERS OF SIMILAR BACKGROUNDS AND PHYSICAL & FISCAL ATTRACTIVENESS. What's particularly frustrating is that Carrie, Bushnell's alter-ego, offers glimmers of intellgence, and we expect her to wake up one day and realize that the friends she has and lifestyle she leads are poisonous. But she never does, and after a while, you just want to slap her and say "If you're so smart, why are you hanging around with all these losers?" A recent New York magazine article on 25 year old "publicists" who throw parties for celebreties had one of them calling Bushnell her "big sister." (Bushnell is close to 40) That about sums up her pathetic position in life. Don't waste your money.
Rating:
Summary: Yawn
Review: Like some others, I bought the book because I enjoyed the HBO series. As a 30-something recently single woman I identified with the dilemmas and frustrations of the show's characters. The book, however, has none of the the TV show's wit or insightfulness. The characters are souless, the plot nonexistent. A colossal bore.
Rating: 
Summary: A Decent Beach Read
Review: To me, this is the kind of book you can read during commercials of your favorite tv show. People with small attention spans will appreciate its disorganized yet witty style.Being a born and raised Manhattanite, I was able to identify all too well with the sad cast of characters Ms. Bushnell portays. They are merely characatures of themselves and after reading the book, I was further reassured that leaving The Big Apple was the best choice for me. I wouldn't trade my life with any of those money-hungry, attention seeking, shallow individuals. I only enjoyed the book because it's always fun to read sordid tales of the city.
Rating: 
Summary: A good love life is hard to come by
Review: I ordered this book from Amazon despite the vast number of readers who called it "soulless" and talked of the "shallow" people that it described. I found it to be nothing of the sort. From Carrie who is continuously confused about her commitment-phobic boyfriend Mr. Big, to the various other single 30-somethings who have yet to find a man worthy of settling down with, I identified with the women in this book. We are taught as girls now to strive to be successful, and yet to look for true love and not to settle for second best. But how many women can achieve this goal when there are so many men who refuse to commit, or are continuously chasing the 18-year-old model types? Bushnell's books shows that success often comes with loneliness, or at least the lack of a lifelong mate. Coupled with its fabulously written text, this book echoed my sentiments about relationships without crushing all of my hope.
Rating:
Summary: Hard and soulless in NYC; deeply depressingly, true for many
Review: I rarely read a book after seeing parts of a television special, but I ordered this book because the HBO program was intriguing. I'm female, 34, and getting married in 2 and a half weeks. When I read this book, I realize what I could have been, and thank what god there is that I am not that person. The money, the parties, the drugs, what's the point? The women and the men are deeply, heartrendingly lonely. I'm not a conservative, but I recognize a total lack of an ethical center, any real reason to live. Everything for these women is manipulation because that's the way they get their men. My fiance and I were considering taking jobs in NYC; both of us are professionals with graduate degrees, neither of us are "beautiful people" and we don't want to be near people who truly believe that what they wear, who they are seen with, the pack they travel with.. that these things matter. They don't. Life is about finding someone-- male or female, I don't care what your orientation is-- to love and to be loved, certainly to have a career, but it is secondary. Not all men are manipulative and won't date anything other than beautiful girls. Perhaps the "eligible" (eligible for what, one wonders?) bachelors portrayed in the book really believe what they say.. if they do, they do because the environment in which they are living is unnatural. NYC is the loneliest place in the world, full of the strangest people, the most damaged people. The vast majority of happily married people work at being married, but the work isn't the word of "staying on top of things" to make sure he isn't cheating, but staying on top of the relationship to make sure it is always progressing and growing and changing; like the living entity it is. Early in the book, someone said something on the order of "what do you do when you want to commit?" and the answer was "Honey, you leave the city." I couldn't agree more. These women reach an age where they realize it's all empty and t! hey want someone, but the men available are used to casual sex and any feeling they might have had has been ground away. The women also feel good when they can "have sex like a man, without feelings." In what way is this good? It's obscene.. not because of the sex, but because of the sharing without sharing, the opening of self with no opening... the kisses that mean nothing. To be able to do these things and feel good about it should be the last thing a person would aspire to, religious or otherwise. I haven't been in a church or Temple for two decades, since I was a young teen.. but I know that when I lay down to have sex with someone, if I'm not sharing, if he isn't, then I'm not there. Why would I want to have the kind of sex? The book says it's about power. I think it's about powerlessness. Power comes from the strength of the energy that you feel when you make love (or have sex.. polite or raunchy, your choice) with someone you actually love. I'm desperately happy that I have been blessed to live someplace else. All that is human has been ground away from these people, leaving husks that move sadly through meaningless days. The book portrays that well, but on occasion seems to be trying to glamorize it. Don't get taken in.. and when you read it, bear in mind that these are REAL PEOPLE living these lives of horrible desperation. Soulless, cold, unfeeling, the book is deeply depressing, but unfortunately, I think it probably true for thousands, tens of thousands of people. My advice to them? Do as the book says.. get out of town.
Rating:
Summary: Unoriginal and depressive
Review: This book gives a voice to all the jerks out there, but with on irony. This was the first book to imiatate "The Wild Girls Club" by Anka Radakovich. (A great book.) In fact, two chapters were copyed from Anka's articles in Details Magazine which were published six months before this book came out. How embarrassing.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing, lacking soul, yet worth reading
Review: Perhaps due to my title, it might be thought that the rating I gave was over enthusiastic. I would have given it a lesser rating, if I hadn't thought it through and realized that the Journalistic eye was working harder as a Narrative style than it should have. What we have is fact colored through participants' eyes. This in no way makes this a lesser novel. A DEPRESSING one, a REALISTIC one, but not a lesser one, and one that also sucks away the soul of the story. It was interesting to me that it so fits the idea of Hard women, of what women are supposedly becoming; it questions the meaning/loss of love for a generation more in search of Romance than any other in a long time, while still cynical of ever finding it. These questions are what makes this a good book and worth that extra star. The narrative fluctuates, so sometimes the reader gets lost, or, in my case, annoyed. However, the book challanges what makes beauty, what is love, for what reasons do we have meaningless sex, why/what are our social norms, and why do we continue to allow them to stop us from finding happiness? Good questions that are presented in an entertaining way. Or, at least, in such a way that even HBO thinks it's worth a show. And maybe that's also its tragedy: it's true.
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