Carrie Bradshaw made a name for herself in the fictional Sex and the City Universe for her fun and flirtatious writing – yet it seems her own taste in literature is anything but.

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

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

However, the star completed her colourful ensemble with one more unlikely accessory: a hardback copy of the book Monkey Grip.

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

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

Set in inner-city Melbourne, the book opens with Nora – who is a freelance writer and actress – living in communal households with her daughter.

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

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

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

25 years after the book’s publication, Helen responded to criticism that she had ‘published her private journal rather than written a novel’.

In an essay for Meanjin, the author responded: ‘I did publish my diary. That’s exactly what I did. But so what? It’s as if this were cheating. 

‘As it if were lazy. As if there were no work involved in keeping a diary in the first place: no thinking, no discipline, no creative energy; no intelligent or artful ordering of material; no choosing of material, for God’s sake.’

Although reviews were mixed, Monkey Grip – which was adapted into a film in 1982 –  is now considered to be one of the first ‘grunge lit’ novels and was named one of the BBC’s 100 Novels that Shaped Our World in 2022.

One year after its publication, Helen Garner (pictured in 2002_ became the first female author to win the Book of the Year Award by the National Book Council

The novel – which is written by Australian author Helen Garner – was first published in 1977 and follows a single mother’s unstable love affair with a heroin addict

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

Meanwhile, David Nicholls wrote: ‘There are very few writers that I admire more than Helen Garner.’ 

The New Yorker’s James Wood added: ‘An intelligent, tautly written novel… Garner is a natural storyteller.’

During the And Just Like That… filming, Sarah Jessica Parker was pictured holding the new Penguin Random House edition hardback – which features an illustration of a woman in a swimming pool on the front cover.

As she strutted down the Manhattan sidewalk, the actress – who is famously a keen reader herself – was pictured holding the book front and centre for the scene. 

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

For the scene, the actress donned a hot pink shirt dress, which she paired with a zebra-print tote bag and white leather heeled boots

During the And Just Like That… filming, Sarah Jessica Parker was pictured holding the new Penguin Random House edition hardback – which features an illustration of a woman in a swimming pool on the front cover

Since 2022, Sarah Jessica Parker has partnered with independent publishing house Zando on her book imprint SJP Lit.

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This deal allows the actress to help publish up-and-coming author’s novels as well as supporting established writers. Earlier this month, the book They Dream in Gold by Mai Sennar was published for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.

The star previously revealed how she was inspired to enter the publishing world after she was pictured holding a copy of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl in 2012, which helped turn into that summer’s must-read.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2022, Sarah explained: [Going into publishing] happened just by virtue of authentic love for the experience — my own experience as a reader and the great necessity in my life for books. 

‘I was at a luncheon and [Hogarth Publisher] Molly Stern was there with Gillian Flynn. I had been photographed walking around the street with Gillian’s last book when it came out so they came by to say hello, and somehow Molly mentioned a book that I had coincidentally been looking for that had yet to be published in the States, Herman Koch’s The Dinner. 

‘I had been reading about it on different blogs and [with] weird little pockets of people who talk about books, and I had been calling bookstores asking for advance copies and trying every kind of clever ploy to get it. She mentioned that she was publishing it, and the next day a parcel of books arrived.’