Is another terrible novel that I'm dying to tell you all about. I'm sure this can't be healthy, but meh. Anyhow. This one was written in 2005 by a person called Plum Sykes (real name Victoria Sykes) who worked for Vogue magazine and lived in the shallow nonsense-fest that is the target market of Sex and the City - i.e. deeply unlikeable New York bimbos.
They say you should always write what you know. Based on this, I really, really, don't want to know the author.
Anyhow. My mother recommended this to me as something to execrate. So here goes.
Executive Summary
Poor Little Rich Girl, The Novel.
A bit more detail if you wouldn't mind?
Do I have to?
Alright, if you insist. Bergdorf Blondes is the tale of a woman who narrates this in the first person and is nameless. However, she tells us that she's part American and part British aristocrat - much like the author. That said, she has an increasingly annoying habit of inserting gratuitous French like saying how something is trés in or referring to herself as moi. And being the sort of stupid useless effort that anyone with an ounce of sense would have run screaming from long before. Her interests are, by her own admission, buying designer clothes, not eating, and attention whoring. And just plain whoring - she spends an inordinate amount of time trying to find a "PH" or Potential Husband who is suitably rich, handsome, and has a mutton mallet the likes of which you've probably seen hanging about between the legs of a Grand National winner.
This is also what everyone who the protagonist knows - "NY girls," she calls them - do also. We're supposed to think that being an astoundingly rich trustafarian in New York is meant to be difficult. All the social intrigue that isn't, society parties, and having "Shame Attacks." This is where you suddenly work out what a colossal skidmark on the dunghampers of humanity you really are and end up buying a DVD player. Apparently it's very expensive as you then end up having to spend money on therapists, alternative therapists, dermatologists (if the author is to be believed then there are designer dermatologists at which it is "in" to go), and general woo-mongers. I tell you, I wish I was a peddler of questionable psychobabble woo. I'd move to New York and, once I'd convinced the locals that I wasn't an Australian as they thought the last time I was there, I'd be rolling in money. Because of stupid airheaded bimbos like the protagonist/author (same person, I'm increasingly sure).
What she does for a living is write for a fashion magazine. I hate to sound like this novel is made of predictability, but she does. She also gives us an insight into the argot of NY Girls. Basically, everything is glam or icky, and if you're thin then you're "ana" and this is a good thing. Because every PH likes a woman that he seriously risks snapping in two while he's kicking her front end in, doesn't he? Sorry, did I say, kicking her front end in? I meant "going to Brazil," because all the NY girls have subscribed to that ridiculous fashion for bald genitals.
The low point for me had to be Chapter 6, where the heroine attempted suicide. To do this, she specifically got a one-way plane trip to Paris, bought a one-off designer dress so to do, and wrote a suicide note that made fascinatingly detailed teen angst bullshit day logs sound terse. Why do this? Because her fiancé had left her because he realised what a horrible waste of space she really was and he could do better with a woman who wasn't so superficial and overdramatic and emo. Ugh. She failed, of course, because we're less than halfway through the book, although it would have been a much improved book if she did succeed in rubbing herself out and the rest of it was blank pages.
No, she has to carry on annoying us with her plotless waste of time for page after page, chapter after chapter. I'm sure this will appeal to you if you like Sex and the City (and who does - I knew someone at university who was, by her own admission, SATC's biggest fan even though, also by her own admission, 3/4 of the episodes were pants. Why, I asked. Because of the couture. Ugh.) But there could at least be a plot, come on.
We're also treated to one of the single worst lines in any work of fiction I have ever encountered. This is up there with Torchwood's "When was the last time you came so hard, you forgot where you were?" and Fifty Shades of Grey's "He's no gentleman. He has my panties!" It really is. Want to know what it is? Well, you asked for it:
"Two croissants, two café lattes, two hundred kisses, and an absolute minimum of two very regrettable orgasms later, we were well entrenched into the bed in 606. I felt giddy with happiness. An orgasm really is the answer to almost every problem in life. I honestly believe that if everyone was having orgasms regularly, there wouldn’t be a Palestinian conflict. Seriously, no one would ever get out of bed in time for it."
Note also the off-handed nod to the destined never to end conflict in the Middle East. This is an example also of the hidden depths that "moi" is supposed to have but which we never see. Informed non-superficiality, methinks. Apparently she went to Princeton as well. However this I can believe; I was at the University of London with a self confessed Sloane Ranger called Jaime, who would almost certainly love this book. But I digress.
The fact is, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to read this novel on any level. There are those who claim that it is a satire, however, I must respectfully disagree. The author is deadly serious. This is evidenced by the fact that she, Plum Sykes, is a real life "It Girl" and worked for American Vogue at the time this novel was written. She used her contacts in same to research these things, and her boss, the inspiration for The Devil Wears Prada, Anna Wintour herself, would not have allowed her to take the piss and remain employed. The protagonist also enjoys several commonalities with the author, at least according to Wikipedia, what with working in the rag trade, being half New Yorker and half British aristocrat, being invited to invitation-only fashion sales, and namedropping designer labels, repeatedly. She also, by her own admission in the afterword, did the research into the thread count of designer bedsheets and other such stuff that, to a fashionista, would be deathly important. So I am convinced that she is absolutely serious about this. It's just too obvious in that if it were satire or trolling, it would be deliberately over the top. This... isn't.
In short, this novel is one of the biggest wastes of paper I have ever encountered. There is nothing honest, meaningful, or thoughty about it in the least. It is just self pity and first world problems. As I said in the introduction, if the author wrote what she knew, I do not want to know the author at any time, now, or ever.