Carrie Bradshaw’s Dark Taste in Literature Revealed! Sarah Jessica Parker grabs a copy of the 1977 hit novel while filming And Just Like That in New York (and it’s not exactly a beach read)

Carrie Bradshaw made a name for herself in the fictional Sex and the City universe for her fun and flirty writing, but it seems her own taste in literature is anything but.

Earlier this week Sarah Jessica Parker, 59, was photographed filming And Just Like That… in New York City with co-star Cynthia Nixon.

For the scene, the actress donned a pink shirt dress, which she teamed with a zebra print bag and white leather heeled boots.

However, the star completed her colorful ensemble with a more unlikely accessory: a hardcover copy of the book Monkey Grip.

The novel, written by Australian author Helen Garner, was first published in 1977 and follows a single mother’s volatile love affair with a heroin addict.

Pictured: Sarah Jessica Parker is seen holding a copy of Helen Garner’s 1977 novel Monkey Grip while filming scenes for And Just Like That in New York

Set in inner-city Melbourne, the book opens with Nora, who is an independent writer and actress, living in shared housing with her daughter.

But when she meets Javo, Nora’s life is turned upside down by his obsessive love and the “monkey grip of her drug addiction,” says the London Review Bookshop analysis.

A year after its publication, Helen Garner became the first female author to win the National Book Council’s Book of the Year Award.

In the 2017 biography A Writing Life: Helen Garner and Her Work, Bernadette Brennan argued that the book’s publication was instrumental in reflecting “the complex female experiences of motherhood, sexuality and desire, within the changing social contexts of the 1970s and explosive notions”. of literary decorum.’

25 years after the book was published, Helen responded to criticism that she had “published her private diary instead of writing a novel”.

In an essay for Meanjin, the author responded: “I published my diary. That’s exactly what I did. But what? It’s like this is cheating.

‘Like being lazy. As if there was no work involved in keeping a journal in the first place: no thought, no discipline, no creative energy; no intelligent or skillful ordering of the material; don’t choose the material, for God’s sake.’

Although reviews were mixed, Monkey Grip, which was adapted into a film in 1982, is now considered one of the first “grunge-lit” novels and was named one of the 100 ·those who shaped our BBC world in 2022.

A year after its publication, Helen Garner (pictured in 2002_ became the first author to win the National Book Council’s Book of the Year Award).

The novel, written by Australian author Helen Garner, was first published in 1977 and follows a single mother’s volatile love affair with a heroin addict.

When a new edition was published in March 2024, Australian author Madelaine Lucas said: “A revelation. Its pages radiate sex and heat, chlorine and rock’n’roll.’

Meanwhile, David Nicholls wrote: “There are very few writers I admire more than Helen Garner.”

James Wood of the New Yorker added, “A smart, well-written novel … Garner is a natural storyteller.”

While filming And Just Like That…, Sarah Jessica Parker was photographed wearing the new Penguin Random House hardcover edition, which features an illustration of a woman in a swimming pool on the cover.

While walking down the sidewalk in Manhattan, the actress, who is famously an avid reader herself, was photographed with the book front and center.

Earlier this week, Sarah Jessica Parker, 59, was photographed filming And Just Like That … in New York City with her co-star Cynthia Nixon.

For the scene, the actress donned a pink shirt dress, which she teamed with a zebra print bag and white leather heeled boots.

While filming And Just Like That…, Sarah Jessica Parker was photographed holding the new Penguin Random House hardcover edition, which features an illustration of a woman in a swimming pool on the cover.

Since 2022, Sarah Jessica Parker has partnered with independent publisher Zando on their book label SJP Lit.

This deal allows the actress to help publish novels by emerging authors and support established writers. Earlier this month, Mai Sennar’s book They Dream in Gold was published for the Fiction Center’s First Novel Award.

The star previously revealed how she was inspired to enter the publishing world after being photographed with a copy of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl in 2012, which helped make it the must-read of that summer.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2022, Sarah explained: (Going into publishing) happened just out of a genuine love of experience: my own experience as a reader and the great need in my life for books.

“I was at a lunch and (Hogarth Publisher) Molly Stern was there with Gillian Flynn. I had been photographed walking down the street with Gillian’s latest book when it came out, so they came to say hello, and of some so Molly mentioned a book she’d been casually looking for that hadn’t yet been published in the United States, Herman Koch’s The Supper.

“He’d been reading about it on different blogs and (with) weird little pockets of people who talk about books, and he’d been calling bookstores asking for advance copies and trying all kinds of tricks to get it. He said the I was publishing, and the next day a package of books arrived.’