The bestselling Brightness Falls--now in trade paper from the author of Bright Lights, Big City. In the story of Russell and Corrine Calloway, set ...
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Jan 04, 2008
Cmamer
rated it: 
Have you ever attended a long cocktail party at an elegant hotel with crowds of well dressed people chattering while a piano player provides background music and after the ball is over find yourself at home with the vague impression that you have not actually been anywhere? If so, you have a good idea of what this book is about.
Jay McInerney enjoyed some acclaim for "Bright Lights, Big City," but this effort is eminently forgettable. It is well written, mildly humorous at t More...
Jay McInerney enjoyed some acclaim for "Bright Lights, Big City," but this effort is eminently forgettable. It is well written, mildly humorous at t More...
Aug 27, 2008
A.J.
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Brightness Falls -- what an appropriate title. How could McInerney have gone from Bright Lights, a narrative tour de force, to this sprawling, turgid mess? Occasional sharp turns of phrase remind us of what he can do, but they're lost among excruciating passages of (sometimes repetitive) exposition and a narrative voice that's often too distant and disengaged. That distance comes from ambition: McInerney has set up too many threads and doesn't have space to tie them all together convincingly.
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Apr 12, 2008
Jack
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Possibly my favorite book from the entire literary brat pack canon, this book goes beyond New England undergrads in orgies of blow and manages to fully explore the relationship of a Manhattan power couple. The novel opens on a storybook marriage between Corrine and Russell with Russell on the cusp of becoming head editor of a large publishing house, replete with coke fueled parties filled with models and the life of the jet set. Everything crashes down at once: the stock market crashes, Russel
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Jun 20, 2011
David
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Brightness Falls is a great American novel, which owes a great deal to F. Scott Fitzgerald and his Gatsby. At times, it seems as if McInerney wants to re-tell the Gatsby tale on Wall Street during the Crash of '87. McInerney's Nick Carraway is, after all, Crash Galloway. However, the meaning of this novel transcends this decade and its hideous "greed is good" mantra: it's not simply a "period piece." The story is about the mad pursuit of wealth, the shallowness of the great F
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Mar 25, 2011
Myles
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Going into this review I had this funny little idea about 1991-2 being a year of growing up for the literary brat pack (a marketing and a journalistic invention that would be long forgotten if it weren't for the fact that we reviewers love it), I made a connection between McInerney, Ellis, Janowitz, Tartt, et al. and the rise and fall in fortunes of the teen pop stars of the late 90s in 2002-03: Timberlake, Aguilera and Spears redefined and ramped up their image while others failing to do so eff
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Jan 08, 2010
Dan
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This is a surprisingly rewarding read. Its a good page turner and yet it also captures something respectful about the MBA-greed generation of New Yorkers - a demographic easily dismissed as shallow and short-sighted. This is a tale of a book editor who sees a way to back an leveraged buyout of his old-time white shoe publishing firm that has not been desperate about profits. The characters are engaging and the story propels itself to a predictable ending. The writing is what makes the book s
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Jan 30, 2010
Brendan
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Holy shit this book was good. I decided recently that because it is possible to read all of McInerney's fiction in a month that one should do so. This whole book really rocked. I like the characters and the arc. I've said this before but a few years ago McInerney seemed dated, but now it's more like his eighties books are a perfect time capsule of a forgotten era that came on the heels of a depressed, near bankrupt 70s. I turned the last page and immediately went on to read his next and the
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Jan 29, 2012
Julia
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New York during the late eighties : the city is blooming with traders, investors and financial animals of all sorts. Russell and Corinne are a successful couple, yet they crave for power. Especially Russell, who is a typical ruthlessly ambitious junior working at Corbin, Dern, a prestigious editor. Corinne, on her side, has became a broker almost without knowing it. Both of them are convinced of their good hearts, Russell because he works in culture (but is obsessed with money and social positio
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Dec 12, 2011
Beverly
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I'm struggling here . . . the writing is good but I can't stand the characters. May not be able to finish this thing. Some days later: Okay, finished the thing, do I get an award? Seriously, it was well written but the first half was everybody trying to be Oscar Wilde witty with a touch of greedy yuck, but the second half showed the characters in a much better, if pathetic, light. Might try Bright Lights, Big City, but probably not soon.
Dec 21, 2009
John
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I read this book twice – something I rarely do. It’s a super sized, roller coaster- of-a- ride of a novel about that most American of themes – the loss of innocence (and the concomitant little accommodations and bargains made along the way) and the moment when all the touchstones and precepts that have guided life come crashing (actually the nickname of the main character) down. McInerney’s visceral, witty style - full of snappy metaphors and clever puns - keeps this narrative humming and buzzin
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Feb 10, 2009
Edijkelly
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Though the story may be dated, mired as it is in the M&A craze of the late '80s, this is one of the few books I've desired to go back to and re-read. I remember getting to a critical part on an airplane and not realizing I was sobbing until the elderly lady next to me offered a tissue. Truly a moving story about characters you hate, but still care about.
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Mar 13, 2011
Lize
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I came across this one at the library the other day and "Brightness falls from hair" immediately popped into my mind. What impressed me about that is that I read the book 19 years ago in 1992 and still remember where the title came from, and what Corrine looked like. It obviously made a big impression.
Mar 12, 2010
Meredith
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I read this book because I had read the sequel, The Good Life, and become engaged with the protagonists of this novel Corrine and Russell. McInerney does a good job of getting inside their heads; although superficially a yuppie couple in NYC, there is actually more to them, and he elicits it nicely.
Jan 29, 2012
Barbara
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Ogni tanto, quando finisco le scorte di libri, nell'attesa di nuovi rifornimenti frugo nelle seconde file della libreria rileggendo quello che vi ho esiliato per vari motivi.
Raramente mi capita di rivalutare qualche libro mal giudicato, magari letto nel momento sbagliato e di promuoverlo tra le prime file...più spesso confermo il mio giudizio e li torno a seppellire lontan dagli occhi e lontan dal cuore
In questo caso ho confermato il mio giudizio iniziale: un libro mediocre e tuttavia non mal sc More...
Raramente mi capita di rivalutare qualche libro mal giudicato, magari letto nel momento sbagliato e di promuoverlo tra le prime file...più spesso confermo il mio giudizio e li torno a seppellire lontan dagli occhi e lontan dal cuore
In questo caso ho confermato il mio giudizio iniziale: un libro mediocre e tuttavia non mal sc More...
Feb 07, 2009
Adele
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My feelings about this book see-sawed from annoyance to affection. It is set in 1987, which at first annoyed the heck out of me with the Wall Street/Bright Lights, Bic City/St. Elmo's Fire-ishness of it all...Gradually, the story drew me in and the characters really won me over.
Dec 30, 2010
AG
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Classic white man's burden shenanigans from McInerney, this time focusing on an early-30s publishing bright light who is deep in debt thanks to his bright lights, big city lifestyle (hmm....) and looks for a way out by playing with the big money boy$. (The Good Life, the sequel which follows these same characters through 9/11, is waiting for me come 2011.) McInerney is actually a phenomenal writer and a master of character and insight; I just have to suppress my douchelord gag reflex about him b
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Jul 16, 2010
Colleen
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I could read this book a hundred times. I may already have; I don't know why, maybe child of the 80s mentality. I just love it.
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Dec 25, 2010
Awet
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Wonderful look at a NY couple in the end of the 80s that struggle with work and each other.
Jul 28, 2011
Derek
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More restrained, and poetic, than his earlier novels - and more effective for it.
Feb 02, 2008
Jennifer
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This book is a cross between Edith Wharton and Page Six--fine writing wrapped up into a juicy, enjoyable, voyeuristic story chronically the happy-on-the-surface-but-not-so-much-underneath lives of a bunch of thirty-somethings in go-go 1980's New York. I found it richer and more satisfying a read than Bright Lights, Big City and it made me want to go back and reread The Good Life--which I read first and also really liked--because that is about the same cast of characters, 15 years later, post-Sep
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Jan 03, 2010
Lauren
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It's official: who could possibly miss the 80s? Crisply written, cinematic.
Oct 28, 2010
Wendy
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interesting until last 30 pages where the author tries to influence the reader politically
May 19, 2008
antonia
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so, i read the Good Life before i read this and while reading it i really was wishing i had done it the other way around (um, the way that they were meant to be read, i assume). anyways, it was good, but not as good or as relevant as the Good Life. and yes, i suppose the 15 year gap in publication probably has something to do with that. either way, a lovely indulgent NY read.
Jun 17, 2008
Rachel
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It is nicely written, but I think it will be pretty forgettable for me. It is in many ways Great Gatsby-like, but realize that I didn't like that great American novel either. I thought I knew where the book was headed, and many ways I was right. The ending was better than I expected though, which boosted it from a "didn't like" to an "ok."
Dec 12, 2007
Terry
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I think this book is TOTALLY underrated. It has its flaws but I think the elegiac tone is just right. I also think it would make a great movie in the right hands, and I mean that as a huge compliment.
