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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Elegiac,
By
This review is from: Brightness Falls (Paperback)
One can stand at a distance and criticize this novel as a tale of two self-absorbed yuppies, or one can come closer and actually read the book and find that it's not so easy to dismiss. Corinne and Russell are very real people, and McInerney does an excellent job fleshing them out. I sympathized with Corinne, a true lost soul who feels helpless as her husband's drive to succeed starts to change him, and also felt as indignant as Russell for the way he was being treated by his superior at the publishing company. All along the way, I felt dread in the pit of my stomach as to what would happen with Russell's attempt to takeover the company, but since McInerney sets the novel in the months right before the Stock Market Crash of 1987, that dread is most likely intentional.
This is the third McInerney novel I've read, and I can now say that I am a fan. "Brightness Falls" is denser and more complex than "Bright Lights, Big City" and "Story of My Life" but it doesn't hit a false note. He conveys late 80s Manhattan perfectly, and juggles the myriad points of view like a pro. Why this novel does not have "National Bestseller" emblazoned across the top surprises me. Perhaps in 1992, people just weren't in the mood to read a novel about 80s excess, feeling it was too soon. Their loss. Several years on, this novel holds up very well. Interesting that the book also somewhat mirrors the Manhattan of today, where finance is once again booming, real estate is over the top and many are living well. People live high, and there's no real sign of stopping. Will this new world of ugly luxury condos (face it, they're ugly), the vanishing arts frontier and dwindling middle class last forever, supplanting a vibrant city with a glossy, homogeneous veneer? It seems that way; nobody foresees an end to to this new gilded age. The hubris is thick in the air and brightness falls when people least expect it.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brightness Falls, but McInerney is Reborn,
By edijkelly@aol.com (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Brightness Falls (Paperback)
I read McInerney's early success Bright Lights, Big City nine years ago and was so impressed that I bought each subsequent book on sight. Disappointingly, the next two I read got increasingly trivial and depressing. Until BRIGHTNESS FALLS. I thought the title was an interesting comment on the success of his first novel and the downfall of his career since then. However, I was not prepared for the stylistic maastery and raw emotion that were to fill the over-400 pages I committed myself to read. It was an adventure to pick up the book each night, as new characters continued to emerge throughout. Some characters had a decided influence on the plot of the book, while others served to embellish the feelings and situations of a given character. Each chapter focusses on a new aspect of the story, though without seeming contrived to rotate through them all. In fact, this approach serves to embed the reader further in the feeling that the lives of the main characters are irreversibly entwined with the lives of all those they encounter. Though it may be trite to say that the book made me cry, it is true. The pure love and pain expressed in its final pages had me sobbing in my airline seat as I read the closing words, much to the embarrassment of the passengers around me. If you liked Bright Lights, Big City and have been waiting for the next great Jay McInerney book, this is it. Wait no longer.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Haute Literature,
By "paul@zettacom.com" (san jose, california USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Brightness Falls (Paperback)
I recall reading "Story of my life" and loving it, and this was McInerney follow-up book. No doubt about it - a far more ambitious project. Deeper characters, richer settings, more complex and intrincate story development and vocabulary. And I do not think McInerney got near enough literary credit for his switcharoo, for I think ths to be an admirable book. It still packs in the witticisms that were expected in a follow-up to a flippant tour de force such as Story of my Life, yet there is also far more depth to everything. And, again, I was a captive of McInerney's prose. Though not as easy to read, it is a still a delight. McInerney's writing is elegant and alive. The characters are all flawed and quite real, and the occasional stereotype allows the reader to feel somewhat smart in a book that otherwise woud possibly be too erudite and Oscar-Wildish for our century. In Story of my Life, McInerney was a musician that solo'd in a jazz bar and simply had fun. In Brightness Falls, he puts on the tux and directs a complete orchestra through a far more complex piece. He does an admirabe job. As far as I am concerned, Story of My Life and Brightness Falls represent his best 2 books to this day.
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