Manolo-Shod Monkey Still on Bushnell’s Back

Since the late 1990s, Candace Bushnell has been defined by something she didn’t actually do–turn Carrie Bradshaw into a romantic heroine. Her comic creation–the neurotic star of the newspaper column and book Sex and the City–was intended to be the deluded center of a savage satire but instead had her sharp edges sanded down by Sarah Jessica Parker’s winsome portrayal on HBO.

With the novel Killing Monica, Bushnell seeks to reclaim her runaway icon. She imagines a writer, Pandy Wallis, who creates “Monica,” a character who becomes so popular and so closely identified with the vacuous actress SondraBeth Schnowzer, that Pandy–dreaming of literary acclaim–is forced to take drastic measures.

Yet Bushnell’s depiction of SondraBeth, an apparent Parker stand-in whose vapidity and fair-weather friendship are written with all fang and little finesse, only underscores the author’s insecurity with her own legacy. More than a decade after the TV series ended, she’s relitigating who deserves credit for its success. Worse, somewhere between the ’90s and today, Bushnell lost her grip on quips. When characters refer to social media as “Instalife,” it’s an awkward grasp at the sort of catchphrase that the HBO series seemed to spawn on a weekly basis.

“You want people to think you’re literary?” Pandy’s husband asks her. “Then be literary.” It’s advice Bushnell didn’t take.

–DANIEL D’ADDARIO