Twenty years after her sharp, seminal first book Sex and the City reshaped the landscape of pop culture and dating with its fly on the wall look at the mating rituals of the Manhattan elite, the trailblazing Candace Bushnell delivers a new book on the wilds and lows of sex and dating after fifty.
Set between the Upper East Side of Manhattan and a country enclave known as The Village, Is There Still Sex in the City? follows a cohort of female friends—Sassy, Kitty, Queenie, Tilda Tia, Marilyn, and Candace—as they navigate the ever-modernizing phenomena of midlife dating and relationships. There’s “Cubbing,” in which a sensible older woman suddenly becomes the love interest of a much younger man, the “Mona Lisa” Treatment—a vaginal restorative surgery often recommended to middle aged women, and what it’s really like to go on Tinder dates as a fifty-something divorcee. From the high highs (My New Boyfriend or MNBs) to the low lows (Middle Age Madness, or MAM cycles), Bushnell illustrates with humor and acuity today’s relationship landscape and the types that roam it.
Drawing from her own experience, in Is There Still Sex in the City? Bushnell spins a smart, lively satirical story of love and life from all angles—marriage and children, divorce and bereavement, as well as the very real pressures on women to maintain their youth and have it all. This is an indispensable companion to one of the most revolutionary dating books of the twentieth century from one of our most important social commentators.
CANDACE BUSHNELL is the critically acclaimed, internationally bestselling author of Sex and the City, Lipstick Jungle, The Carrie Diaries, One Fifth Avenue, Trading Up, Four Blondes, Summer and the City and Killing Monica. Sex and the City, published in 1996, was the basis for the HBO hit series and two subsequent blockbuster movies. Lipstick Jungle became a popular television series on NBC, as did The Carrie Diaries on the CW.
Read an Excerpt
Six months into my retreat, I got a call from Tina Brown. She had a story idea for me. Now that the appropriate time had passed since my divorce, I should throw myself back into the dating world and write about what it was like to be dating over fifty. I could do internet dating. I could hire a matchmaker. . .
I cut her off.
I don’t think so.
I wasn’t ready to start dating. But most of all, I didn’t want to. I’d been in relationships for nearly thirty-five years. I’d even experienced the full relationship cycle—fall in love, get married, and get divorced.
And now I was supposed to do it all over again? Was engaging in the relationship cycle the only thing I could do with my life? I thought about that good old definition of crazy: Doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result.
It was time to put an end to the cycle. And so I decided for the first time in thirty-four years, to be man-free.
This also meant being sex-free. At this point in my life, I’m not a casual sex person.
I didn’t talk about it, of course. The topic of sex, once the source of so much amusement, embarrassment, fear and joy, rarely came up. My single friends had been single forever and not dating and therefore not getting any, while my married friends were married and dealing with kids and also—I imagined—not getting any.
