A novel about men and women confronting their sudden middle age with wit and low behaviour, or fear and confusion, or honesty and decency. None of them would ever be the same again.
Brightness Falls
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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
While the strengths of McInerney's writing are in evidence, the characterizations in this well-plotted generational portrait of late-'80s Manhattan yuppies fail to convince. A BOMC alternate and a three-week PW bestseller in cloth. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
From Library Journal
The author of Bright Lights, Big City ( LJ 10/1/84) again offers an amusing and perceptive morality tale of Eighties excess. Russell Calloway, an editor for a major publishing house, and his stockbroker wife Corrine appear to be the perfect New York couple. Dissatisfied with the management of his publishing company, Russell organizes a hostile takeover bid and embarks on an affair with Trina, his investment banker. But he loses his shirt in the 1987 stock market crash, Corrine leaves him, and his best friend commits suicide. McInerney wryly examines the dilemma of people in their 30s who came of age with sex, drugs, and rock and roll and must now come to grips with adult responsibilities. Replete with ironic insight, wit, and style, this is highly recommended for popular fiction collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/92.
- Patricia Ross, Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
- Patricia Ross, Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
Format:Paperback
I felt that, in addition to a good story with well-developed characters, the book offered good insights into the realm of 1980s corporate finance practices and perceptions as well as offering what I consider to be a valid etiology of the eating disorder anorexia-nervosa. I would recommend this novel to anyone intersted in the areas of economics, finance, psychology, or to those who simply would like to be entertained for a few days.
Format: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.
By Brendan
Format:Paperback
I read McInerney for one reason--his comical observation of the human condition. This book had it's comical moments but above all, it chronicals an era. It captures the the 1980's in an acutely sharp time lapse photograph. This book is unique by classical dramatic definitions--it is a tragedy, a history, and a marginal comdedy. A historical book of the same stature of any of the classical Greek Histories, but this isn't Greece Before Christ--It's 1980's, Metropolitan America. Procure this book. Read this book. Cherish it as I have, and put it on your shelf as a memoir of a time and place.
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4.1 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Filleted Bananafish; Fiction for Rolling Stone -ahem-Readers
McInerney -best known for his book "Bright Lights, Big City," a minor Eighties subclassic- its author popularized as a sort of wunderkind by Esquire (and himself) its... Read more
Published on Sep 7 2001 by page smyth
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining
Given the tormented and tormenting reviews here, I expected this to be an unpleasant book to read. Instead, I found it rather interesting and engaging. Read more
Published on Oct 9 1999 by Sean Burke
5.0 out of 5 stars
McInerney's best
While the popular choice for McInerney's magnum opus might be BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY, I'll take BRIGHTNESS FALLS any day. Read more
Published on July 22 1999 by cross5104@hotmail.com
3.0 out of 5 stars
McInerny bemoans his own disillusion; well-written
Jay McInerny should feel fortunate that he possesses the incredible gifts of prose that he does; this novel is otherwise artless, inconsequential, and dated. Read more
Published on July 7 1999
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Sumptious Read
Compared to his previous novels, this one feels like a feast. The dialogue is witty and realistic, the situations are never boring, and the characters roam around you on the... Read more
Published on Jun 24 1999 by D. Myers
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautifully written
This is a beautifullly written book. A little slow to get started, but a nice more recent story than his other books. Nice snapshot of the era. Read more
Published on May 17 1999 by "mitchcumstein"
4.0 out of 5 stars
The demise of a pawn in a corporate raid
With little of the incoherence or mawkishness that marked "Ransom", but also little of the levity that graced "Bright Lights, Big City", the novel relates a... Read more
Published on May 7 1999 by Michael Khan
3.0 out of 5 stars
Improvement?
This is the only McInerney book I haven't read and it's pretty intimidating--I'm about 50 pages through and am rather bored, does it get any better?
Published on Mar 3 1999
3.0 out of 5 stars
Boilerplate McInerney, with some added pages this time
Last of the Savages was perhaps the best book on friendship I have read to date. Bright Lights, Big City was an honest tour de force that I read in a day. Read more
Published on Sep 17 1998
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brightness Falls, but McInerney is Reborn
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. Read more
Published on Nov 16 1997 by edijkelly@aol.com
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