Cancel those farewell Sex and the City parties scheduled for Friday.

Q: Why?

A: Before Carrie and company have even downed their last Cosmopolitans on British screens, glasses are being raised to some potential replacements.

Q: Who are?

A: The Bergdorf Blondes, named after the book of the same name by Plum Sykes. Although it is not out until next month, it has already been dubbed ''the chic read of the spring'' in New York.

Q: A Tolstoyan epic of suffering and squalor set in 21st-century Gotham?

A: Not quite. There's lots of fashion and bitchiness, though, and not all of it confined to the pages of the book.

Q: Go on?

A: Sykes, contributing editor at Vogue and first-time novelist, has been paid a jaw-dropping (pounds) 350,000 advance by Miramax, prompting an attack of the green-eyed monsters among some of her contemporaries.

Q: What is the book about?

A: A blonde British fashion writer named ''Moi'' (not a million miles from Sykes), and her heiress friend, Julie Bergdorf. As well as shopping and gossiping and attending fashion shows, both are on a frantic search for an ATM.

Q: How exciting can a hunt for a cashpoint be?

A: An ATM in this instance is code for a rich boyfriend, who is also preferably a PH (Potential Husband), in possession of a PJ (Private Jet). As the Observer reports, acronymns and slang are as much a feature of Sykes's book as shoes were of Sex and the City. To walk the mean streets of Bergdorf Blondes one has to know a PAP (Park Avenue Princess) from a Front Row Girl (the fashion cognoscenti), and comment knowingly on the quality of her Fake Bake (salon tan).

Q: Coming soon to a TV screen near us?

A: You can bet your Blahniks.