Rating: Summary: Graphic Designer Review: This book was so entertaining! I actually laughed outloud on several occasions! Definitely, appreciated more by the fashion lover. Once I started reading I could not put it down! Highly entertaining!
Rating: Summary: Predictable and boring Review: The problem with this "book" is that's it's about stupid and vapid people living in a world obsessed with vanity and fashion and material goods. Since I'm a sucker for the English sense of humor, and because I had read some funny lines in the reviews, I bought this thinking it would be a satire on a stupid world. But it's just boring. It's lucky to get 1 star from me. We shouldn't blame Plum Sykes ... she's smart enough to see how preoccupied we are and to make some money at our expense, but don't buy this if you care about characters in books, or if you think Sykes wants to make fun of her subjects. She IS the subject. She's MOI. She lives and loves the world she's writing about and that makes her blind to its faults. If fashion and celebrity are your thing, go on reading magazines like Vogue and People. But if you want to read a book, do yourself a favor and buy a real novel. This thing will just make you angry for wasting your time and money.
Rating: Summary: Maybe I should starve myself... Review: The debut novel by Plum Sykes was dreadful! I am an avid Vogue and Elle reader, in which both magazines recommended this novel. I am guessing the recommendations were purely based on the overly mentioned Chloe jeans and Chanel private sales, but beyond that, the main character's priorities are severely whack. In one chapter, a glossary is provided with some key terms including "A.T.M."- which is a rich boyfriend and "ana"- short for anorexic which equals thin and consequently equals perfection! I could tolerate this story until reading that an eating disorder could somehow wind up being something positive. That was when I was sure that this story wasn't going anywhere good. To have a novel based on trendy, city girls would be perfect. I worshipped Sex and the City as much as the next die-hard Manolo girl did, and this book doesn't do justice to that lifestyle. Pass on this one; after your thoughts about entering anorexia subside, you will still feel the urge to also get your highlights touched up every 13 days. If the least, this novel is not healthy for your financial issues.
Rating: Summary: Sex and the city at a different angle Review: The book was very entertaining which should be the only reason to read something like this. After reading others unfair reviews of the book it made me appreciate it even more. It is funny and witty and I guess you have to understand the lifestyle to appreciate it. Definately a must-read for all shopaholics.
Rating: Summary: Acutely lousy Review: Well, I got schnookered into buying this, having read the prepublication hype, and I, too, must be the victim of "acute jealousy" according to the gushing, Brooklyn-dwelling, ex-"Eloise", reviewer below who was in need of exactly this break from all that HEAVY reading she'd been doing. That is to say-this book stinks, and I miss my money. All very well to be "light" or "lite" in terms of plot, characterisation(yes, Eloise-even a picture book needs "characters" in it to like, dislike or otherwise give a toss about), or basically blow page after page with dull allusions to pedis and manis and pashminas and whatnots, but after all--it IS priced just like a real, like, *valuable* hardcover NOVEL, not like a, you know-magazine, or the comic book this most surely is. Did the author really graduate from Oxford? Because if so-I've just lost years of admiration for that university. This writing is baaad. Want a good, snarky, clever read about the high life among the ladies of the demimonde? Then read "Love in a Cold Climate" by Nancy Mitford-50 years on, but it's less dated than this feeble little thing. It's also funny. This stuff is merely an attempt to yet again rip off "Bridget Jones". Doesn't work. Next!
Rating: Summary: WITTY & FUNNY Review: I just loved this book, it's pure fun. These girls know how live, I mean who wouldn't want to fly "everywhere" on a PJ?. It's a wonderful satirical look at a part of new york life that I am sure is really not nearly this fun.....
Rating: Summary: Deliciously Vapid Princessy Novel Review: If you positively loved Eloise and wondered what it would be like to live in her world as a twentysomething, this is the book for you! It's hard to tell where Plum Sykes' life ends and the book begins, which is entirely made up by the fact that she really knows how to laugh at herself. I thought she handled the very REBECCA conceit of the non-named narrator charmingly, and I really grew to like her characters. Note: while I have a hunch that some if not all of the reviews here panning the book are the result of acute jealousy, I have to admit this book may not be for everyone. It's not heavy on plot and there's no heartpounding romance, so if that's what you go in for you're going to be disappointed. It's more "literary lite," a breezy break for readers who generally go in for heavier fare, and more than likely, a New-York-o-centric crowd. But since that's, well, exactly ME, I can say with a lot of enthusiasm that I loved this book!
Rating: Summary: The cover is more interesting Review: I had been dying to get my mitts on this, and it was truly a disappointment. It's hard to believe this gal writes for a living. I think I could have written something better. I want to point out something, to any girl who gets her hair highlighted (as Julie does by "Ariette), there is no dye involved, and when the author states "the dye was applied to her strands" (or something similar), being the as savvy as she claims to be, she would know that BLEACH is applied to make hair blonde. These inconsistencies, even I know better. Please don't waste your money on this, there are so many sappy novels out there that are probably better. Plum Sykes isn't even blonde as is proud of this fact...whatever.
Rating: Summary: AN UPTOWN MOMENT FOR PLUM SYKES Review: The voice of Vogue has spoken. Hipsters should quake in their Frye boots. Brit Plum Sykes, Contributing Editor at US Vogue, has a new novel out and the vibe is all about Park Avenue. The J Train is out,out,out; J Mendel and the J Sisters are in with a vengeance. Plum Sykes first novel, Bergdorf Blondes, details the shopping and mating habits of an animal native to Manhattan's Upper East Side, the Park Avenue Princess. Sykes should know such a creature well. In her 7 years at US Vogue, (preceded by 4 years at British Vogue) Plum has had a front row seat for many moments in fashion history and, with her plummy British accent, is a veteran of Manhattan's fickle A-list. Her acknowledgements read like Page Six: Matthew Williamson, Marina Rust, Miranda Brooks, Anna Wintour, and Pamela Gross to name-drop a few. Sykes has been a fixture of the socialite-set since her arrival in New York in 1997 with her blonde twin, Lucy. Seeing that anyone who's anyone these days seems to be branding themselves, Sykes has taken pen to paper and made her own little reality-based dog and pony show. Sykes rides the chick lit wave with aplomb and reminds us all that Spring 2004 is having an Uptown moment. If Chloe Sevigny was the late 90s fashion darling it was in part because of her original Kids street-cred. Sevigny was the darker side of fashion, she was Last Days of Disco decadent. More Barney's Co-op than Bergdorf's, she paved the way for a slew of bored looking waifs on Avenue A & sparked a fascination with Imitation of Christ, trucker-hat sporting DJs, and all things downtown. Now it seems that Plum is poised to steal her throne as poster child for the "thinking girl's" it-girl as she unapolagetically surveys a scene strewn with heiresses, teacup dogs, and Magnolia Bakery cupcakes. All from 57th Street and Fifth Avenue. In a Bergdorf Blonde's world, The Strokes, Homeland Security, Sofia Coppola's wistful disengagement, and anything Brooklyn are, as "Moi" might say, "Eeew." Moi is Plum's protagonist and alter-ego: an English fashion writer in New York on a quest for the perfect Potential Husband. Her sidekick is the fizzy Julie Bergdorf, a pampered Eloise at the Plaza with a platinum card. At points dreadful, it works in the way A-list voyeurism always works. Sykes knows she's on to a cultural moment and she runs with it. Clearly, Sykes learned something at Oxford beyond the social anthropology of Pimms. Bergdorf Blondes follows Jane Austen's well-heeled formula to a "tea." Sykes' novel is Sense and Sensibility with Colin Firth and Hugh Grant on a sugar high. Despite claiming not to own a DVD player, Plum follows precisiely the plot of most foppish Grant films. In the end, the nice, frumpled guy wins out and the somewhat frivolous ingénue reveals her humanity as we get to see her dress rip, her heel break. Oohh, she's a real girl like us, after all. It's too early to tell whether Sykes will be able to fill the vacuum left by Sex and the City, but she certainly celebrates the same kind of aspirational lifestyle. Bergdorf Blondes is part comedy of manners, part little black book for those who desire, above all, to be in the know. While Sykes doesn't name socialites' names, she does let us take a peak at her address book. The Pierre, Equinox, and the Maritime. So what if the girls in Wichita don't realize that it's all a bit dated; they're probably still drinking Cosmopolitans. Anna Wintour has called Sykes the perfect embodiment of the Vogue lifestyle, and with that Sykes tells us what's "now," as she does each month as a for the magazine. Sykes depicts an elite corps of Stepford socialites, who are a force to be reckoned with in their skittle-hued Ralph Lauren cashmere. While there's little character development, we're rather accustomed to that in our Simple Life, Trump-TV era. Just bring on the voyeuristic glitz. In the end, it's all about Plum. It may be fluff, but it's politically savvy fluff; Sykes is no Truman Capote. Aside form one disgruntled ex-fiance Damian Loeb, she is careful not to step on any of her powerful friends' toes. She is after all, a working girl who knows how bleak life would be if those designer freebies stopped arriving.
Rating: Summary: Can I Have My Money Back? Review: Hype without the substance, and I'm not talking about a Brazilian bikini wax, which is what Peach Sykes should stick to writing about. Her characters are shallow and predictable, their language unintelligible. This isn't reading but hastily pasted email messages by a girl that gets by on with a good pair of shoes.
|