Synopses & Reviews
In
The Good Life, Jay McInerney unveils a story of love, family, conflicting desires, and catastrophic loss in his most powerfully searing work thus far.
Clinging to a semiprecarious existence in TriBeCa, Corrine and Russell Calloway have survived a separation and are wonderstruck by young twins whose provenance is nothing less than miraculous. 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. 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.
Wise, surprising, and, ultimately, heart-stoppingly redemptive, The Good Life captures lives that allow us to see through personal, social, and moral complexity more clearly into the heart of things.
Review
"The prose was painfully right and the story was breaking my heart as it reached its conclusion." Providence Journal
Review
"McInerney fumbles his ambitions with his handling of the details. Any glimpse he manages to give us of real human frailty and hope is countered by long passages that fall back on the banal cliches of standard soap opera." Oregonian
Review
"Despite all the craft of the book and its big, bold theme, it's hard to feel much for these glittering and philandering New Yorkers going through their existential crises." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Review
"Sept. 11 may still be too close and too huge to distill through art, but it's hard not to admire the ambition of a writer for trying. The Good Life...is a brave effort..." Philadelphia Inquirer
Review
"The Good Life attests to a more mature McInerney's skill in treating his subject matter seriously. His characters...are rendered tenderly, with the same polish and erudition he has previously devoted to satire..." Seattle Times
Review
"McInerney's insights are undermined by sentimental moralizing about the way the city corrupts the innocent hardly a novel observation and one he makes with ham-handed didacticism...." Houston Chronicle
Review
"Struggling to give his characters hearts as potent as their ever-devious heads, McInerney has rendered them improbable and bland." Newsday
Review
"McInerney perfectly captures the sensation of getting hit in the solar plexis and living through it....The Good Life has more substance than McInerney's usual stories of sex and sin among New York City yuppies..." Denver Post
Synopsis
In this bestselling novel, the author of Bright Lights, Big City unveils a story of love, family, conflicting desires, and catastrophic loss in a powerfully searing work of fiction.
Clinging to a semiprecarious existence in TriBeCa, Corrine and Russell Calloway have survived a separation and are wonderstruck by young twins whose provenance is nothing less than miraculous. 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. 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.
Wise, surprising, and, ultimately, heart-stoppingly redemptive, The Good Life captures lives that allow us to see through personal, social, and moral complexity more clearly into the heart of things.
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About the Author
Jay McInerney is the author of seven novels including Bright Lights, Big City and Brightness Falls. He has also published a collection of short stories, How it Ended, and two books on wine. He is a regular contributor to New York Magazine, the Guardian Weekly, and Corriere della Serra. He lives in New York City and Water Mill, New York.