Candace Bushnell: Lipstick Jungle

Success is the new sex. And power is more important than a fabulous wardrobe in Candace Bushnell's latest offering. It's enough to make Manolo Blahnik blub into his prototype sandals. When Bushnell's most famous novel Sex and the City was turned into the television sitcom phenomenon, the shoemaker became a household name, thanks to the shoe-obsessed Carrie Bradshaw.

Here, the three already-successful 40-something friends want to get to the top and realise that it's going to take more than a killer pair of heels to do so.

This is more Work and the City. They are just too busy ruling Manhattan to get laid that often.

All except for Nico O'Neilly, mother of Katrina and wife to Seymour, a man who shows dachshunds and helped make her what she is. As the editor of Bonfire magazine plotting to become the CEO and president of Verner Publications, she manages to squeeze in an affair with a male model between appointments and the odd lunch at Michael's with her two best girlfriends.

Victory Ford is one of the city's brightest designers with 83 stores in Japan, ideas of her own couture line and dreams of being filthy rich, just like her billionaire boyfriend.

Wendy Healy is the busy president of Parador Pictures and mother of three with whining stay-at-home husband Shane. She loves him even though he has failed just about everything he ever tried except fatherhood. Bushnell is not so much a champion of women that she can't see Shane has a point with her keen role-reversal observations. His view is that he gave up scriptwriting to focus on bringing up the kids.

Bushnell's been successful long enough to know that for women, trying to have it all can be a minefield, and it goes deeper than the cliche that powerful men are good at what they do and powerful women are bitches.

In the end, the threesome realise how lucky they are.

"I mean, it's so easy to solve your problems when you're a successful woman and you have your own money," Wendy said. "I think about all the women who aren't, and don't, and the hell they must go through. It's something we can never forget."

Heck, you're left with a case of the warm fuzzies, as opposed to Bushnell's previous sting-in-the-tale efforts.

Read it now, or you could always wait for the TV series.

* Fiona Hawtin is the editor of the Herald's Viva section
* Little, Brown, $35