Name: The Good Life
Rating: 4.0 (1 reviews)
Author: Jay McInerney

About this book

Summary

Book Summary

Clinging to a semi-precarious existence in TriBeCa, Corrine and Russell Calloway have survived a separation and are thoroughly wonderstruck by young twins whose provenance is nothing less than miraculous, even as they contend with the faded promise of a marriage tinged with suspicion and deceit. Meanwhile, several miles uptown and perched near the top of the Upper East Side’s social register, Luke McGavock has postponed his accumulation of wealth in an attempt to recover the sense of purpose now lacking in a life that often gives him pause—especially with regard to his teenage daughter, whose wanton extravagance bears a horrifying resemblance to her mother's.

But on a September morning, brightness falls horribly from the sky, and people worlds apart suddenly find themselves working side by side at the devastated site, feeling lost anywhere else, yet battered still by memory and regret, by fresh disappointment and unimaginable shock. What happens, or should happen, when life stops us in our tracks, or our own choices do? What if both secrets and secret needs, long guarded steadfastly, are finally revealed? What is the good life?

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Media Reviews

'This story is a simple one, but McInerney delivers it with grace and wit. He does what a good novelist should: he takes an abstract idea and gives it life.' - PW.
'Inveterate Gothamites will especially appreciate this love story between kindred spirits and between city dwellers and their wounded mecca.' - Library Journal.
'McInerney's novel of 9/11 and its aftershocks offers acute cultural observation before sinking into a sappy romance....Though McInerney has a sharp eye .... the dialogue and interior monologues through which Corrine and Luke proceed with their affair would be embarrassing, overheated cliché even by bodice-ripping standards.

This information about The Good Life was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Cathryn Conroy

This Is the Literary Equivalent of a Bottle of Champagne—Fizzy and Fun but Not Much Substance
This book is the literary equivalent of a bottle of Champagne. It opens with a pop, and while it's fizzy and bubbly and fun, there ultimately isn't much substance to it. Still, it's pretty amazing!

Written by Jay McInerney in his witty and intelligent style, this is the second of three books in the "Brightness Falls" series. The golden couple Russell and Corrine Calloway are living the good life in the heart of New York City in a converted loft with their six-year-old twins. It's Monday, September 10, 2001. Corrine is running late for their big dinner party. She arrives home minutes before the guests, surprised to find her sister Hilary, whom Corrine thought was at her home in California, lying on their couch, while Russell plays chef in the kitchen. And then the world changes so drastically that it's hard to remember what it was like before. Corrine meets a man walking out of the dust and ash of the World Trade Center, and they meet again volunteering at a Ground Zero soup kitchen. The troubles in the Calloway marriage rise to the surface as Corrine and Russell deal quite differently with the emotions and anguish of the 9/11 tragedy.

This is a story of enduring love and love lost, of an enduring life and life lost. But it's also a story of the aftermath of 9/11 and the supercharged emotions and anguish that roiled New York City for so long. While what happened on that fateful day in 2001 is always treated with respect, the story that surrounds it is a sex-fueled tale of rich New Yorkers with too much of everything. And it truly is the quintessential "New York" story with lots of inside jokes, tidbits, and trivia, which, as a non-New Yorker, I often felt left me on the outside looking in.

But even so, I greatly admire Jay McInerney. He's a solid writer in the same mold as Tom Wolfe. A good story. A good bottle of Champagne. Enjoy!

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