Candace Bushnell, in the divinely bitchy Sex and the City, answers this question by introducing a formidable corps of successful grown-ups who are each "up to their cuffs in polished cynicism". Fully equipped with high credit limits, high heels and a never-ending supply of condoms, they storm their way through the stars and bars of New York doing drugs, drink and sex and treading the dangerous waters between the easy-living twentysomething years and the last-chance thirtysomethings.

As successful and smart single women work their way through Married Men and Modelisers (men who will only date models), Serial Daters and Perennial Bachelors, watching forlornly as the occasional Happily Married pops in to remind themselves how lucky they are, Bushnell irreverently dives in and out of varying habitats, eavesdropping on shabby lives decorated with Gold Cards and Designer Labels and taking the reader on an anthropological tour of the underbelly of the rich and the richer on their endless search for fulfilment.

Painfully sharp, often poignant and chock full with more truth than anyone would really like to admit, Sex and the City is a harem-scarem, casually vicious but ultimately thorough dissing of a thirtysomething world where gloss and glamour can never compensate for The Real Thing, and where eventually Settling is the only answer. --Susan Harrison