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Avenue Of Gold

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By LAURIE MUCHNICK

Bloomberg News Service

Published: October 12, 2008

Forget sex, but not the city. What concerns everyone in Candace Bushnell's new novel, "One Fifth Avenue," is real estate.

As the book opens, Louise Houghton, a Brooke Astor-like society matron living in a grand triplex atop the stately pre-war tower, dies in a freak accident on her terrace. Merle, a Liz Smith-like gossip columnist, wants Mrs. Houghton's penthouse split up, so her nephew, Philip Oakland, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who also lives in the building, can buy the bottom floor.

But Mindy Gooch, the bitter co-op board president who makes (only!) half a million dollars a year in her dead-end job as a media executive, won't allow the penthouse to be divided. If she has to live in a first-floor apartment that used to be a warren of servants' quarters, why should Oakland be allowed to move up?

This begins entertainingly enough, with Bushnell's usual attention to the details of Manhattan society.

But after a while, a book in which everyone can be described in one sentence begins to wear thin.

And there's another drawback: Bad timing. While the author of "Sex and the City" drops a few mentions of the softening real-estate market, her new book is feeling very dated all of a sudden.

We are soon introduced to Billy Litchfield, a walking anachronism who doesn't live at One Fifth but is "a sort of concierge to the very rich and successful, making introductions to decorators, art dealers, club impresarios and members of the boards of both cultural establishments and apartment buildings."

His latest project is Annalisa Rice, a beautiful, tomboyish lawyer whose husband has just gone to work for a hedge fund. In his role as matchmaker, Litchfield fixes Rice up with Mrs. Houghton's apartment.

The Rices represent the new moneyed class. Not the middle-class bohemians who have long lived in Greenwich Village, but the explosively wealthy finance types who have moved in, following the designer boutiques and Carrie Bradshaw bus tours. The problem is that Annalisa Rice is too nice, and her husband, Paul, is too mean.

Annalisa Rice has the best apartment in the building, but she's the only person in the book who doesn't base her whole identity on her possessions. Would she really stay with Paul after he buys a tenth of the Chinese stock market and decides he can do anything he wants, even if it leads to the death of one of Annalisa's friends?

Bushnell tries to have a good time with her villains, but she isn't quite funny enough.

Underpinning the book is a wellspring of anxiety. Everyone (except the saintly Annalisa) is jostling for position, trying to get ahead, or at least hold onto what they've got.

Bushnell has set up a classic confrontation between old and new money, old and new media, old and new New York. Unfortunately for Bushnell, New York changes so fast that it seems to have gotten away from her.

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