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In the world of books, Jay McInerney is both bigger and smaller than the reputation he gained from his 1984 phenomenon, Bright Lights, Big City.
Love it or hate it, that cocaine-enhanced tale of "Bolivian marching powder" defines a period for many urban Americans. Unfortunately, McInerney the author seemed to devolve into an overexposed "literary Brat Pack" celebrity.
But give McInerney credit: He keeps soldiering on as a writer and turning out novels, most memorably Brightness Falls (1992).
In his new novel, The Good Life, Mc-Inerney takes up some of the characters from Brightness, specifically a group of bohemian publishing types in New York City. (No need to remember the earlier novel to read this one.)
At the center of Good Life are two married couples and their children.
Russell is a book editor married to his college girlfriend, Corrine. She is a devoted mother to their 6-year-old twins.
The other couple features a Southerner named Luke who has made millions on Wall Street. His wife is a famous charity chick named Sasha. Their daughter, Ashley, has entered the dangerous teen years.
Corrine encounters the disoriented plutocrat Luke emerging from the dust of 9/11. What follows is a complicated love affair.
McInerney tosses in a dash of Tom Wolfe, a dollop of F. Scott Fitzgerald and a touch of Edith Wharton as he explores a number of themes. He examines the conflict between the demands of children and the desires of the individual, the baggage everyone totes around from childhood, the tension between husbands and wives over money, and the stress of rearing children in that epicenter of materialism, Manhattan.
And, of course, the physical and psychological dislocation of 9/11.
A confession: Jay McInerney's novels can be profoundly annoying. His plots creak along, and he needlessly litters his text with famous real-life names.
Yet he has written passages that continue to resonate far longer than observations from more acclaimed authors. He clearly knows the worlds of moneyed Manhattan, and he writes about the subtle, embarrassing distinctions of class.
Most of all, his characters are petty, self-centered, insecure, jealous and extremely believable. The reader comes to care about them.
The Good Life is a very human story.
The Good Life
By Jay McInerney
Knopf, 353 pp., $25
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