April 15-21, 2004

artpicks

Plum Sykes reads

books

Now that Candace Bushnell is gone from your memory and Jennifer Weiner is all too present in the gossipy chick-lit stakes, what's needed is a fierce woman who'll offer up fashionista-forward, cultural pap with literary-lite aplomb at a premium. No sooner than you can say "Jimmy Choo" comes Vogue scribe Plum Sykes and her first novel, Bergdorf Blondes (Miramax). This debutante author -- one altogether too familiar with a Manhattan teeming with Brits and dits -- hunts the heiress crowd parked between Park and Seventh avenues as if seeking out Heathcliff along the moors. With an anonymous London-born "champagne-bubble-about-town" as its protagonist-antagonist and a neurotic "Julie Bergdorf" as her best pal, the book looks at their relationships with the nervous Nellies around them -- models, hairdressers and art directors walking on eggshells not to say, do or wear the wrong things, all the while mouthing the proper platitudes. It's as if Truman Capote's Answered Prayers were unraveling before your very eyes. Better yet, think of BB as a martini with twists -- Botox, blowjobs, Brazilian bikini waxes -- squirting in your eyes with the bittersweet bitchiness of a lemon rind. Grr.

Plum Sykes reads, Thu., April 15, 6 p.m., Borders, 1 S. Broad St., 215-568-7400.

—A.D. Amorosi

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