Book - The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell
If you’re a fan of Sex and the City, you’ll already know what this is about and may well have read it. I wasn’t but begrudgingly got into after the series ended in 2008 as friends were constantly recommending it. I was packing for a house move and watched a couple of episodes each evening while surrounded by brown boxes, tape and bubble wrap.
The Carrie Diaries had been sitting on my TBR pile for years until last month when it fitted my criteria of reading the lightest of frothiest fluff in an attempt to remove myself from the world we currently find oursleves in. Bingo.
The only issue is I read it in three days. I had no idea where or why I had bought it until three quarters of the way through, out popped a bookmark from my favourite book shop in Vancouver. I must have bought it as a pity buy as it was closing and I wanted to get something. It wins on having a great cover and it is exactly what I hoped.
It fills in the gaps of what drew Carrie Bradshaw to New York and to writing. For super-fans it will be no surprise to learn that Carrie had a comfortable upbringing with her two sisters in NY’s neighbour, Connecticut and lost her mum as a teenager.
The Carrie Diaries chronicles her last year in school before she goes to college. I read in three days in the middle of which I went to see the excellent Booksmart film. This confused me somewhat as the story is so similar in that the film is also about the last year of school, actually the last day. Both have a gay character, and the usual but interesting American stories of who are the popular kids and who are the geeks and everything in between. Which is where Carrie and her merry band of friends fall.
Carrie Bradshsaw is in what she thinks of as a solid cirle of friends until they are rocked by the behaviour of one, the one from her childhood. We learn how she deals with this treachery, the school bully and the class heartthrob. All of which connects us with where the Sex and the City story takes off.
I hear there is a follow up to this 2010 release which I may well pick up as the ending of this one is just the best.