'The story of a disintegrating marriage set in New York in the frenzied few months leading up to the Wall Street crash of 1987. A sort of BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES with the added advantage of believable, likeable characters' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY Their moment was of the brief, shining sort when everything seemed possible. The gold rush of the 1980s, when the best and the brightest vied with the worst and most craven for riches, fame and the love of beautiful people. With all the force and cunning enterprise of Manhattan itself, BRIGHTNESS FALLS captures lives-in-the-making - men and women confronting their sudden middle-age with wit and low behaviour, fear and confusion, and occasionally even a little honesty and decency. None of them, ever, would be the same again
Reading this novel made me realize that I'm not nearly as good a writer as I'd always thought I was. I make a living writing but McInerney reminded me of how beautiful prose can be. The subject matter - a self-obsessed upper-middle class couple in Manhattan - is not what makes this novel special. It's McInerney's incredible ability to develop characters on an intimate level, relying almost exclusively on dialogue, that earns him the book review comparisons to Fitzgerald. Most writers take the easy way out, describing characters - how they are. Better writers show how they are through their actions and reactions. The great ones let it flow naturally as conversation that the reader feels they are part of. I feel like I know Russell and Corinne Calloway - even if I don't like them at all.
Download Ebook Brightness Falls (Bloomsbury Paperbacks)