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Sex And Shopping: the Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl: An Autobiography
Dear Reader,
As I was about to start my eleventh novel, I abruptly realized that I was making a huge mistake. On the verge of launching into the imagined world of a twenty-eight-year-old, I felt an intense need to tell another story, the story of a woman I know through and through...a woman with more wealth of experience, a woman who's seen more real glamour, known more fascinating people, lived in a world of more sophistication, and arrived at more hard-won maturity than that twenty-eight-year-old could hope for---in short, my own story. I've tried to remain as unknowable as possible, the better to let my heroines hold the stage, but now I was ready to tell the truth about myself, with no holding back.
I've had a different life from that of the majority of women of my generation and background. While I seemed like another "nice Jewish girl," underneath that convenient cover I'd traveled my own, inner-directed path and had many a spicy and secret adventure. I grew up in a complicated tangle of privilege, family problems, and tormented teenaged sexuality. After a riotous education at Wellesley, my life was turned upside down by a glorious year in Paris, marked by an intense but ill-starred romance. I spent the next half-decade in New York, sowing lighthearted wild oats until I finally met my true love, to whom I've been married for forty-six years.
When I was fifty I had an utterly unexpected, almost unbelievable success as a number-one bestselling novelist that has continued for book after book. Challenging, lucky, exciting, and often devastatingly askew, my life seems to have been lived under a wild and antic star.
I've had as much amazing fun as my heroines, and here's the book to prove it.
Judith Krantz
As I was about to start my eleventh novel, I abruptly realized that I was making a huge mistake. On the verge of launching into the imagined world of a twenty-eight-year-old, I felt an intense need to tell another story, the story of a woman I know through and through...a woman with more wealth of experience, a woman who's seen more real glamour, known more fascinating people, lived in a world of more sophistication, and arrived at more hard-won maturity than that twenty-eight-year-old could hope for---in short, my own story. I've tried to remain as unknowable as possible, the better to let my heroines hold the stage, but now I was ready to tell the truth about myself, with no holding back.
I've had a different life from that of the majority of women of my generation and background. While I seemed like another "nice Jewish girl," underneath that convenient cover I'd traveled my own, inner-directed path and had many a spicy and secret adventure. I grew up in a complicated tangle of privilege, family problems, and tormented teenaged sexuality. After a riotous education at Wellesley, my life was turned upside down by a glorious year in Paris, marked by an intense but ill-starred romance. I spent the next half-decade in New York, sowing lighthearted wild oats until I finally met my true love, to whom I've been married for forty-six years.
When I was fifty I had an utterly unexpected, almost unbelievable success as a number-one bestselling novelist that has continued for book after book. Challenging, lucky, exciting, and often devastatingly askew, my life seems to have been lived under a wild and antic star.
I've had as much amazing fun as my heroines, and here's the book to prove it.
Judith Krantz
- GenresAutobiographyNonfiction
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
17 people are currently reading
133 people want to read
About the author
Judith Krantz
59 books310 followersJudith Krantz was an American author of blockbuster romance novels including her first novel Scruples followed by Princess Daisy. Krantz's books have been translated into 52 languages and sold more than 85 million copies worldwide. Seven have been adapted as TV miniseries, with her late husband, Steve Krantz.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 16, 2020
More than sex and shopping
This autobiography has a definite old school vibe—Judith Krantz was more or less from my mother’s generation, yet I was pleasantly surprised to find that her personal journey kept my attention and offered insights into life. The meat of the story went far beyond the depth of a sex-and-shopping novel as she reflected on the dynamics and dysfunctional nature of her family of origin. Judith Krantz made an honest effort to “know thyself” and to understand the world around her and to explore French culture. For me, the most interesting parts of the book were about her writer’s life and the marketing and publicity aspects of her work, and how publishing for best selling authors worked during that bygone era.
This autobiography has a definite old school vibe—Judith Krantz was more or less from my mother’s generation, yet I was pleasantly surprised to find that her personal journey kept my attention and offered insights into life. The meat of the story went far beyond the depth of a sex-and-shopping novel as she reflected on the dynamics and dysfunctional nature of her family of origin. Judith Krantz made an honest effort to “know thyself” and to understand the world around her and to explore French culture. For me, the most interesting parts of the book were about her writer’s life and the marketing and publicity aspects of her work, and how publishing for best selling authors worked during that bygone era.
June 12, 2024
This is a gem of a book. She was a publishing legend lost to recent history.
Judith Krantz was one of the founding mothers of the chic lit genre. Scruples was very much Dynasty-esque and confessions of a shopaholic. There could be some arguments that this was the first mainstream novel to talk about the fashion industry, drawing the same interest as people later had with The Devil Wears Prada.
What's even more interesting about her is, while she was known for books about fashion, high society, and conflicts with men, Scruples, its sequels, and one or two other books were the only of her work body that could be categorized as glitzy lit.
In reality, her masterwork was here multi-generational family sagas; Mistral's Daugther, Till We Meet Again, Princess Daisey, and I'll Take Manhattan. I was amazed, when she said Mistral's Daugther was her best work. I thought so, too. It is an amazing book!
Judith grew up affluent, in NYC. Her parents were interesting. A cold, womanizer father, who, while she didn't say so, I believe she worked into side flings, in her fiction. He mother was a working woman who didn't care to parent much. She was cold, image obsessed, and repressed.
Judith had a childhood with the usual kid conflicts. She was an insecure teen. She actually never really had much of a career, before becoming a novelist. I don't mean to be insulting. She was hard working. After graduating college, her parents took her on a trip to Europe. She stayed in Paris, and was subsidized by her parents for a long time! She had jobs, but none of them were a major career.
There was one story about how complicated her relationship with her parents. They wanted her to return home from Paris. She had a fling with an officer who was gay, and in the closet. Judith said she could've blackmailed her parents into giving her more money to keep living in France by threatening to marry the closeted guy. But she was such an obedient girl, she returned home. What?
She moved back to New York. She gets some grounding in the magazine industry, but was never a star in the field. Eventually, she married Steve Krantz, and enjoyed time as a mother. It seems her husband encouraged her to pursue a career as a writer. He had the connections. He thought, by then, Judith had enough stories from her life she needed to tell.
Judith writes the book, to get him off her back. She falls in love with her work, and gets it published.
The last part of the memoir is devoted to her rising career. I LOVED this part. Judith does what I wish a lot more books by career successful people did. She talks about the early momentum of her career, and hustling to get publicity. I appreciated this. Often, too many books dive into the early years, then skip to the peak of fame. There isn't enough account of what it's like to get the first taste of fame, and push it to new heights, with sweat and tears.
Judith wrote about this time, in great detail. It's the best behind-the-curtain process of becoming a glamorous writer I've seen. Aspiring writers forget, in her time, many cities had their own, local talk shows, including Cincinnati and Minneapolis. The goal was to get interest in buying the book, among the local population. Eventually, there would be enough sales to get on the NYT bestseller list. Book tours, at her time, were as important as concert tickets. This happened. Judith was connections, from her husband. But she still had to make a name for herself, to be able to secure the movie rights, and subsequent books.
She worked in PR, for most of her adult life. She said a huge point in her books was to show how hard it was to seem so flawless. I was so happy she was willing to subject herself to this treatment. I didn't take her talk about her speaking gigs, events, and famous people she met and bragging. She put it in the context of how important it was for her name to cirruclate to keep sales up.
Also, what was funny, she was always a bad speller and couldn't spell Manhattan, where she grew up.
Judith Krantz was one of the founding mothers of the chic lit genre. Scruples was very much Dynasty-esque and confessions of a shopaholic. There could be some arguments that this was the first mainstream novel to talk about the fashion industry, drawing the same interest as people later had with The Devil Wears Prada.
What's even more interesting about her is, while she was known for books about fashion, high society, and conflicts with men, Scruples, its sequels, and one or two other books were the only of her work body that could be categorized as glitzy lit.
In reality, her masterwork was here multi-generational family sagas; Mistral's Daugther, Till We Meet Again, Princess Daisey, and I'll Take Manhattan. I was amazed, when she said Mistral's Daugther was her best work. I thought so, too. It is an amazing book!
Judith grew up affluent, in NYC. Her parents were interesting. A cold, womanizer father, who, while she didn't say so, I believe she worked into side flings, in her fiction. He mother was a working woman who didn't care to parent much. She was cold, image obsessed, and repressed.
Judith had a childhood with the usual kid conflicts. She was an insecure teen. She actually never really had much of a career, before becoming a novelist. I don't mean to be insulting. She was hard working. After graduating college, her parents took her on a trip to Europe. She stayed in Paris, and was subsidized by her parents for a long time! She had jobs, but none of them were a major career.
There was one story about how complicated her relationship with her parents. They wanted her to return home from Paris. She had a fling with an officer who was gay, and in the closet. Judith said she could've blackmailed her parents into giving her more money to keep living in France by threatening to marry the closeted guy. But she was such an obedient girl, she returned home. What?
She moved back to New York. She gets some grounding in the magazine industry, but was never a star in the field. Eventually, she married Steve Krantz, and enjoyed time as a mother. It seems her husband encouraged her to pursue a career as a writer. He had the connections. He thought, by then, Judith had enough stories from her life she needed to tell.
Judith writes the book, to get him off her back. She falls in love with her work, and gets it published.
The last part of the memoir is devoted to her rising career. I LOVED this part. Judith does what I wish a lot more books by career successful people did. She talks about the early momentum of her career, and hustling to get publicity. I appreciated this. Often, too many books dive into the early years, then skip to the peak of fame. There isn't enough account of what it's like to get the first taste of fame, and push it to new heights, with sweat and tears.
Judith wrote about this time, in great detail. It's the best behind-the-curtain process of becoming a glamorous writer I've seen. Aspiring writers forget, in her time, many cities had their own, local talk shows, including Cincinnati and Minneapolis. The goal was to get interest in buying the book, among the local population. Eventually, there would be enough sales to get on the NYT bestseller list. Book tours, at her time, were as important as concert tickets. This happened. Judith was connections, from her husband. But she still had to make a name for herself, to be able to secure the movie rights, and subsequent books.
She worked in PR, for most of her adult life. She said a huge point in her books was to show how hard it was to seem so flawless. I was so happy she was willing to subject herself to this treatment. I didn't take her talk about her speaking gigs, events, and famous people she met and bragging. She put it in the context of how important it was for her name to cirruclate to keep sales up.
Also, what was funny, she was always a bad speller and couldn't spell Manhattan, where she grew up.
October 23, 2017
having read judith krantz's books in high school, it was fun to get to know more about her upbringing and how that influenced her stories.
July 11, 2018
Entertaining and funny, if somewhat amoral, recalling of an interesting and intense life, by the best of the "trashy" authors of glitz romance novels. She certainly knew what she was writing about!
September 17, 2022
She wrote her biography in 2020. I didn't know she had written one! I loved reading her books (Princess Daisy, Scruples) when I was younger. I figured her biography would be interesting, and it was.
November 27, 2012
This should really be called "Completely, Utterly, Devastatingly, Superbly: A Woman and the Adverbs she Loved Unreservedly" ...but I only kid because I love.
The first half of the book is totally dishy and fun, with the kind of descriptions of "what normal people did in the olden days" that are absolute catnip to me. The second half drags a bit, but overall a super fun read!
The first half of the book is totally dishy and fun, with the kind of descriptions of "what normal people did in the olden days" that are absolute catnip to me. The second half drags a bit, but overall a super fun read!
January 1, 2015
One of my favorites. A great behind the scenes look into the making of a national bestselling author before the Internet and Sicial Media existed. Plus, frankly, her stories about the lessons she learned from decorating a dream apartment when she moved to Paris, are wonderful, especially because she admits the mistakes she made!
April 25, 2014
It was great to read this book, and get to know The Author Juduth Krantz , what an interesting lady, I just wish she was still writing books, she is such a fantastic Author with real talent!
January 29, 2010
Judith Krantz narrates her life as if it were a novel. An example of self-knowledge and honesty. I really enjoyed reading this book.
May 14, 2010
Boring. Didn't finish.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews