The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell (ebook)

 

This book is weird. It doesn’t seem like it was written by Candace Bushnell at all. I find her books to have characters with strange but wonderful names, odd but completely believable plots and incredible intricacies of social networks.

 

The Carrie Diaries has a plot, a lot of speech but very little detail. Carrie, a true fashion horse, describes her outfit to us only rarely. The characters have normal names (like George and Peter) and there is no background. To read this book, you need to be familiar with Carrie Bradshaw because she’s not explained all that well.

 

This is about Carrie in her final year of high school. She loves writing. She is also fantastically good at maths (from the woman who nearly bankrupted herself on shoes). She’s a bit shy, a bit nerdy and a swimmer. These don’t fit in with my version of what I know the older Carrie to be – she’s pretty confident, doesn’t have the body of a swimmer and is fiercely independent. I know we’ve all changed since high school, but surely the seeds could be planted in this book?

 

There are a couple of good one liners that you can see Carrie typing and musing over (on a typewriter, this is the eighties y’know).

 

I’m not sure who this is aimed at (it all becomes a little more Sex and the City in the last chapter, although you can see it coming) because while we have Carrie waiting for the right man to lose her virginity, she also smokes and drinks a lot for a 17/18 year old.

 

I think you’d need to be a hardcore SATC fan to love this, whereas I am only an interested party (I haven’t even seen the second movie). I read this as an ebook, which I am glad of ‘cause no-one could tell what I was reading.

 

A poor history of Carrie – I know it’s near impossible to please the fans, but this isn’t her!

 

6.5 out of 10.