Customer Reviews

Story of My Life

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book is often trashed by reviewers of a certain literary persuasion, but I found myself pulled to its rapid-fire prose and tales of excess and figurative (and literal) nosedives in 1987 New York City. The main character here is a would-be actress named Alison Poole (later purloined by Brett Easton Ellis in some of his novels) and she is a twenty-year-old "postmodern girl" whose tragic flaws and self destructive impulses are to an extent offset by her absolute honesty in the way she tells us about herself and her friends. As in Mcinerney's earlier Bright Lights, Big City, cocaine in all its alabaster glow is never made to seem so unappealing. Here we see the toll it takes on its user and the way it seems to extract the soul from Alison and many of those who are in this novel with her. In Story of my Life, we trail Alison through a few weeks in the year 1987, as she takes acting classes, serially sleeps with men, drinks, snorts, smokes and downs pills of every stripe and description, and screams at us about her frustration with why exactly (she can't seem to put her finger on it) her existence is so miserable. She is from a rich family, but financially needy, neglected by her divorced parents and in a state of constant competition with her sisters. Alison offers us some stinging and very accurate observations about life and her culture, but yet she misses huge facts even as they stare her in the face. ("Story of my life..." she'll say over and over about things that puzzle or anger her.) She and her cohorts, girls with names like Didi, Francesca and Jeanne, get their thrills from drugs, from stealing one another's boyfriends, and from a vicious preppie version of the old slumber party game Truth or Dare. Along the path between the covers, Alison swindles men out of money by claiming they've impregnated her and she needs funds for an abortion. She also, for all these somewhat disgusting flaws, gives us a rare view into the mind of a woman of her time and social class, and entertains us with bitingly apt observations and speculations, and more than a few times she gives up accidental wit that one probably wouldn't find in any book not authored by Jay Mcinerney. This is a weak novel in some ways (it lacks a solid plot) but a fine dose of satire that will keep the era in which it is set on life support for many decades to come.

Halfway through reading this book, I had to remind myself that I was reading a novel by Jay McInerney and not a female author. McInerney captures the voice, personality and hang-ups of Alison Poole so well that it's as though the novel is a transcription of an audio tape. Very few authors have been able to pull a feat like this off so convincingly (I'm thinking Wally Lamb's "She's Come Undone") but then, McInerney is also the guy who made me love a novel written in the second person, so I shouldn't be too surprised.

McInerney's characters are believable and his New York singles scene still resonates after nearly twenty years. Sure people have cell phones now, but that doesn't mean Alison wouldn't face just as many answering machines (or voicemails) today as she did then; she'd just be calling a lot more and things would be even more frustrating. Story of her life. I'm surprised that this novel hasn't received better press; I hadn't even heard of it until I spotted it in a bookstore but it sure goes against the popular myth that McInerney was just a one hit wonder. "Story of My Life" is a worthy follow-up.

One complaint: I think that the ending of the novel is a bit too abrupt and somewhat of a cop-out, as though the author had written himself into a corner and wasn't quite sure where to go from there. Up until then, I was so into Alison and her crazy world that when she reaches a dead end, I was let down. Don't let that deter you from checking out this novel though; it's a look into an urban scene that's in the past but at the same time hasn't really changed at all.

I recall reading McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City" due to all then hype around it, and hating it. The main tragi-stupid, silly and self-destructive character simply got more on my nerves with every page. Thus, when one day, for some reason while listening to the radio I heard a review of this book, I was somewhat doubtful, yet decided to check it out. What followed was total inability to put the book down until I finished it, cover to cover. It is very readable. It's jazzy rhythm, with hilarious fast-paced passages interrupted by a more introspective brief slow adagio, is simply brilliant. Witnessing an intelligent person that struggles to defeat her capacity for introspection while entertaining us with the wittiest insights and wordplay is captivating. It does not have the pretense to be a masterpiece, and yet I find it one of the best books I have ever read. Bravo, Jay McInerney.

Anyone who says this book is a dated time capsule isn't connecting the 80's Allison to our current cultural obsession with the Allisons of today like Miley, Lindsey, Paris and Nicole.

If anything 20 years later the Allisons have acquired a whole new form of American worship. 'Sex and the City's' Carrie with her self-destructive chase of Mr. Big and obsession with looking good to the point of almost going homeless are pure Allison. And the revelation that John Edward's mistress Rielle Hunter was the basis of the main character of this book brings it all home about who we admire and what they're really about.

I first read this book as a young woman in my 20s when it was first published and couldn't put it down. McInerny completely got the zeitgiest. He captured the voice of women I was surrounded by in college in another big city. Allison was narcissitic and tragic, but she was also as sharp as a knife with a lot of talent squandered to chasing men, rubbed-off status, and distraction. She might be more colorful, articulate and take a lot more drugs than most, but she was also not far off from most women I knew at her core. A strong inner life was a nice idea but was interpreted mostly as a lot of self-absorbed chatter, ala Allison.

20 years later I still quote Allison/Jay on "the chain of pain" we seem to pass to each other instead of growing up and making the world better. That's what resonated me about Allison. So much opportunity and inner gifts squandered in the near single-focused pursuit of acquiring externals. This is a lot like America itself.

The fact Reille/Allison and a 'family man' presidential candidate who looked like the American ideal ended up together make complete sense.


McInerny wrote an updated female-voiced The Great Gatsby in this one.

"Story of My Life" is considered by most to be one of Jay McInerney's lesser titles, but it's my favorite. I can't explain why I love this book so much. It doesn't have much of a plot - party girls in Manhattan circa 1980s do too much coke and meet the wrong guys - but when I first read it as a freshman in college, something about it made a huge impact; the writing felt so alive and real, like my best friend was telling me her story. I've reread it several times since then (and I NEVER reread books) and it still holds up. I still can't believe McInerney's a man; he gets inside the female psyche so effortlessly he must have been a woman in his past life.

I just wanted to continue reading. It was never boring: Alison could have been in bed all through the book, her thoughts and feelings would have kept me reading anyway.

I think this is an underappreciated jewel in McInerny's collection. In the novel, he has perfectly captured the lifestyle of the wild and crazy party girls of the late '80's. This book resonated so strongly with me and my friends that the language became part of our personal lingo (this is where I heard "yada yada yada" for the first time, years before it was on Seinfeld). Very enjoyable and humorous.

Jay McInerney has said that Rielle Hunter, suggested to be the paramour of John Edwards, was the inspiration for the Allison Poole lead character. Whoa! If the real Rielle Hunter/Lisa Druck is only half as messed up as Allison Poole, she's still a major league twit!

The book is well-written and reads like a diary, especially impressive considering that the author is not a woman. It's an interesting, graphic time capsule of the greed and drug-influenced decade of the 1980s in New York.

But I confess, I read it mostly to find out the Allison/Rielle connection. In that respect, it was very revealing.

A lot of attention was paid to McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City" but I, and a co-worker (who, unlike myself, doesn't read much and has a short attention span), both really enjoyed this book much more. A nice, light read, and funny.

I thought "Bright Lights, Big City" was just average, but I thought McInerney's "Brightness Falls" was just AWFUL. If you're interested in reading McInerney's work, start with "Story of My Life."

This novel inspired me to write (a similar) one of my own. I still can't believe it was written by a man and not by one of my girlfriends. I feel as if I've met the main character a million times on the LA club circuit. I can totally relate to this book-- for someone who can't, however, this book is still recommended, as it puts forth an extremely honest and accurate rendition of a young, beautiful and wild girl's life in the city. It is also very witty and HILARIOUS, as well as thought provoking (i.e. the "chain of pain" theory.) There are two other books by this author that are similar to this one, specifically "Bright lights Big City" and "Model behavior", however neither one is as compelling in my opinion--perhaps because their protagonists are male and I can't relate as well. The author does, however, have a wonderful talent for bringing his characters to life and making you symathize with them even though they all have incredibly prominent faults. This quality alone makes his novels worth the price and time.