Killing Monica

Girls Will be Girls

Candace Bushnell may not have invented the chick lit genre, but she did redefine it.  Between 1994-1996 she wrote a column for The New York Observer, which was adapted into the bestselling book Sex and the City, which in turn was the basis for the hit TV series of the same name and two movies. She followed up with the bestselling novels, 4 Blondes, Trading Up,Lipstick Jungle, One Fifth Avenue, The Carrie Diaries, and Summer and the City, but will known forever as the writer of SATC.

Her world of designer outfits, Jimmy Choos and sleek men became aspirational for millions of women around the world who bought into the dreams of a glamorous high life she sold.  Her latest book, Killing Monica is said to mirror her real-life friendship with Sarah Jessica Parker, who played Carrie Bradshaw in SATC.  It is also the lament of a writer whose creation becomes bigger than her and threatens to smother her imagination.

The protagonist of Killing Monica is a successful writer, Panemonia ‘Pandy’ James or PJ Wallis. She wrote a super successful series of books about a golden-haired, wonder girl called Monica, who is sort of alter ego.  The Monica books have a massive fan following and have been turned into a series of films, starring Sondrabeth Schnowzer. The actress and writer become such close friends that they are referred to in the media as Sondrabeth.  They fall out eventually over a man (naturally!) a film star called Doug Stone.

When the book opens, Pandy and her silly gaggle of pink champagne guzzling friends are having a party in her trendy New York loft.  Pandy has divorced her husband, Jonny Balaga, a celebrity chef, who siphoned off all her money. The only way to be solvent again is to write another Monica book, which she does not want to do. She tries to get her agent, the patient yet outspoken Henry, to try to sell a historical novel about an ancestor, Lady Wallis. She wants to be taken seriously as a literary writer, not just a chick lit hack.

When things go down the tube, and Pandy is caught in a fire in her ancestral home, that leaves her bald and, for some odd reason, impersonating her mysteriously missing sister Hellenor. The estranged gal pal SondraBeth reappears with a battalion of mediapeople. When she finds out Hellenor is actually Pandy, they cook up scheme to kill off Monica, who is the cause of all Pandy’s current troubles, financial and romantic.

Most of the book has women getting drunk, sleeping around, trying to find stability and happiness before it’s too late—even if it means getting entangled with self absorbed and useless men like Doug and Jonny.  After the fire, the story takes on a frenzied pace and goes into madcap territory—episodes that involve TV shows, revolving stages, burkhas, gangsters, screaming fans and a huge Monica cutout.

Even though it’s mostly predictable, the book does squeeze in a twist in the end, that actually redeems the silliness that precedes it.

Bushnell’s books are not to everybody taste, and can’t be taken seriously, but to the credit ofKilling Monica, Pandy and SondraBeth are not complete simpering idiots— they make their blunders and are manipulated by men, but also possess a half-way feminist spine.  

Killing Monica

By Candace Bushnell

Publisher: Grand Central

Pages: 320