Bright, Precious Days

Description

Russell and Corrine Calloway have spent half their lives in the bright lights of New York. Theirs is the generation that flew too close to the sun on wings of cocaine - and whose lives changed irrevocably when planes crashed into the Twin Towers. Now, in 2008, Russell runs his own publishing house and Corrine manages a food redistribution programme. He clings to their loft and the illusion of downtown bohemia, while she longs to have more space for their twelve-year-old twins. Although they try to forget each other's past indiscretions, when Jeff Pierce's posthumous, autobiographical novel garners a new cult following, the memory of their friend begins to haunt the couple, and their marriage feels increasingly unstable. Not helped by the reappearance of Corrine's former lover, Luke McGavock, whose ardour seems no cooler despite having a beautiful new wife in tow. Acutely observed and brilliantly told, Bright, Precious Days dissects the moral complexities of relationships, while painting a portrait of New York as Obama and Clinton battle for leadership and the collapse of Lehman Brothers looms. A moving, deeply humane novel about the mistakes we make, persistence in struggle and love's ability to adapt and survive, it confirms McInerney as a great chronicler of our times.

Jay McInerney came to prominence in 1984 with his first novel Bright Lights, Big City. He is the author of six further novels: Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls, The Last of the Savages, Model Behaviour and The Good Life, two short story collections, and three non-fiction books on wine, one of which was the acclaimed A Hedonist in the Cellar. He writes a wine column for Town and Country and is a regular contributor to the Guardian, the New York Times Book Review and Corriere della Sera. He lives in Manhattan and Bridgehampton, New York. jaymcinerney.com / @JayMcInerney

One of the most gifted writers of his generation ... Whatever he does makes fascinating reading * Observer * McInerney's description of the downward arc of their lives in the middle ages has extra piquancy ... his sharp eye makes them fascinating * Mail on Sunday * No contemporary author quite matches Jay McInerney * Mail on Sunday * Not only a brilliant stylist but a master of characterization, with a keen eye for the incongruities of urban life * New York Times * McInerney joins a small number of dissident novelists, headed by Norman Mailer, who change the way we look at American history * Sunday Telegraph * A scabrously scintillating stylist * Guardian * McInerney has a gift for the simultaneous perception of the glamour and tawdriness of city life * Evening Standard * Our modern-day Fitzgerald evokes New York's fading glamour in Bright, Precious Days * Vanity Fair * The characters in Bright, Precious Days are so well-drawn they leap off the page like great old friends ... McInerney['s] legendary lyrical prose and fierce intelligence are on full display in Bright, Precious Days ... So, too, is his deep humour ... Jay is a very, very funny writer, with passages that are reminiscent of P.G.Wodehouse in their deliciously outlandish humour ... 'a masterpiece' -- Candace Bushnell * Porter * Mr McInerney's multivolume, not-so-distant historical fiction can't help recalling John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom books or Phillip Roth's second Zuckerman trilogy ... compassion and empathy don't dull a wicked sense of humour ... Mr McInerney has long been celebrated as a social satirist ... a portrait of a marriage in full, its strengths and weaknesses, its betrayals and compromises as vivid as you'll find in any medium * New York Times * Affecting ... mellow, earnest, almost elegiac. It is intelligent, and knowing in its depiction of certain segments of New York ... McInerney's real subject is happiness, and whether it can survive the batterings of our restlessness and ambition. On this subject, he is mature and humane, offering considered and convincing analysis instead of familiar novelistic tropes ... Refreshingly clear-eyed * New Yorker * Vivid ... McInerney builds up a multilayered survey of Manhattan shortly before the 2008 crash, and this brings out the best in him ... McInerney's playful set-piece scenes of social observation are memorable ... Polished and diverting * Literary Review * McInerney's fiction can't help recalling John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom books or Philip Roth's second Zuckerman trilogy ... The Calloway books share strengths with all those works, as well as an underlying spirit that is McInerney's own * Scotsman * McInerney's skill is in his unobtrusive deployment of the free, indirect style, inhabiting his characters' sensibilities ... The seismic rumble of oncoming financial disaster is augured in deft touches ... McInerney is good on the fine gradations that lie in the upper reaches of the US class system ... He has a sensitive ear ... The novel is well stocked with expertly handled set pieces * Times Literary Supplement * Stylish observation ... Suspenseful and well told -- Lionel Shriver * Financial Times * Vivid ... McInerney builds up a multilayered survey of Manhattan shortly before the 2008 crash, and this brings out the best in him. Everything is seamlessly woven into Russell's or Corrine's experiences ... McInerney's playful set-piece scenes of social observation ... are invariably ... memorable * Literary Review * I sped through it with relish ... an eye for the ridiculousness and an infectious sense of fun * New Statesman * Those of us who enjoyed the first two books will find pleasure in receiving news of old friends, especially of their failures and misdeeds.Bright, Precious Days provides plenty of both ... McInerney is generous with satirical vignettes of New York excess * Irish Times * Partly an account of midlife crisis and partly a satirical social chronicle ... There is a warmth to McInerney's cataloguing of midlife's moments of tristesse * Spectator * Enjoyable, entertaining * Independent * What was not to love about this sybaritic morality tale of adultery, fine dining and publishing hubris? Come on reviewers, live a little! -- Richard Beswick * Guardian *