On My Knees

June 24, 2013
Aschenbrand (The Only Bush I Trust Is My Own) leads readers by a studded leash on a bumpy ride from Manhattan through Queens, Tucson, Paris, and Israel. Quotes from Twain, Euripides, and Henri Bergson do little to soften the ride, however, as frank, hypersexualized banter begins as soon as we meet her parents. From here it's not a long walk before she moves in with best friend Hanna and tries to forget her own problems by writing about Hanna's lost virginity to a man with a diaper fetish. The love of our heroine's life is a couch in a Stuyvesant Town apartment she inherits when her grandmother, "in perhaps the biggest favor she had ever done for me, dropped dead." In the nine months she illegally inhabits the apartment, she breaks up with Noam, her lover of 10 years, has an affair with Nico, her boss at an ad agency, and spends a good deal of time on the aforementioned plastic-covered couch watching Law & Order SVU. The cliches and insipidness are far too prominent, and Aschenbrand's happy ending feels too pat to be real. Sex, fashion adventure, and boredom are laced throughout, and while there are bright spots, it's mostly one shade of grey.

July 15, 2013
Unapologetic Jewish American Princess' sassy memoir about sex in the city. Coming on like a potty-mouthed Carrie Bradshaw, Aschenbrand (The Only Bush I Trust Is My Own, 2005) brings all the narcissism, arrogance and elitism to be expected from a proud-to-be-spoiled upper-middle-class woman who would rather live in a rat-infested Chinatown apartment than endure the shame of living anywhere outside of Manhattan. Of course, if it hadn't been for Tucker Max's subliterate success with I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (2005), one could hardly fathom that high school-quality prose like this (from a noncelebrity author, anyway) could actually be taken seriously from even the most undiscerning of major publishers: Like Max, Aschenbrand's brand of tell-all true sex confessions isn't really as sexy as it is childishly bawdy and gross. Rather than actually take the risk of describing in sensual detail her close encounters with hapless male victims, she mostly just makes fun of them or emphasizes a decidedly nonsexy feature of herself, like the long hairs growing out of her ass. She also offers plenty of pedestrian, Dr. Ruth-style wisdom: "[I]f I had learned anything at all, it was that if someone wasn't sure if they wanted to be with you the worst thing you can do is to try to convince them otherwise." Aschenbrand also insists that men are intimidated by her, yet somehow every sentient male with a penis and a discernible pulse, from Manhattan to Tel Aviv, seems comfortable enough with her to end up in her bed (all except author Philip Roth, that is, whom she ate cherries with but sadly didn't have sex with). Mostly, however, this is just a tossed-off, random survey of her recent hookups and breakups, both in the Big Apple and abroad, with some rich-girl kvetching thrown in for good measure. Beach reading for those who find Candace Bushnell too literary.

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