GROUPS OF well-dressed women sipped margaritas rather than Sex and the City-style cosmopolitans as they waited to hear author Candace Bushnell speak at a Dublin city-centre pub last night.
Bushnell was in Dublin to promote her new book, One Fifth Avenue.
Whispers such as "do you not remember the episode where Miranda . . .?" could be heard around the room of women in their 20s and 30s.
Bushnell said women everywhere seemed to relate to the ups and downs of the New York-based Sex and the City women.
"Everywhere I go, women always identify with those characters, and there's always a Carrie and a Samantha," she said last night. "I think the audience feels like they really know those characters."
Bushnell said she was proud of the film adaptation of the series, which caused a frenzy when released in Ireland earlier this year. But despite such successes, Bushnell said she did not think of this when writing: "I just try to write the best book I can write and that's what I try to focus on."
About five men could be counted dotted around the room, shyly perusing One Fifth Avenue.
Even though her new novel's characters live in an affluent part of New York, Bushnell said the book did have something to say to women in the midst of economic downturn.
"The book deals with the mortgage crisis and hedge-fund managers and the enormous wealth they have accrued," she said. "It is about how life goes on and the new replaces the old and the new becomes the establishment."
