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    The Good Life
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    The Good Life
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    The Good Life
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Good Life

    Written by Jay McInerney

    Narrated by Robertson Dean

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Hailed by Newsweek as "a superb and humane social critic" with, according to The Wall Street Journal, "all the true instincts of a major novelist," Jay McInerney unveils a story of love, family, conflicting desires, and catastrophic loss in his most powerfully searing work thus far.

    Clinging to a semiprecarious existence in TriBeCa, Corrine and Russell Calloway have survived a separation and are thoroughly wonderstruck by young twins whose provenance is nothing less than miraculous, even as they contend with the faded promise of a marriage tinged with suspicion and deceit. Meanwhile, several miles uptown and perched near the top of the Upper East Side's social register, Luke McGavock has postponed his accumulation of wealth in an attempt to recover the sense of purpose now lacking in a life that often gives him pause-especially with regard to his teenage daughter, whose wanton extravagance bears a horrifying resemblance to her mother's. But on a September morning, brightness falls horribly from the sky, and people worlds apart suddenly find themselves working side by side at the devastated site, feeling lost anywhere else, yet battered still by memory and regret, by fresh disappointment and unimaginable shock. What happens, or should happen, when life stops us in our tracks, or our own choices do? What if both secrets and secret needs, long guarded steadfastly, are finally revealed? What is the good life?

    Posed with astonishing understanding and compassion, these questions power a novel rich with characters and events, both comic and harrowing, revelatory about not only New York after the attacks but also the toll taken on those lucky enough to have survived them. Wise, surprising, and, ultimately, heart-stoppingly redemptive, The Good Life captures lives that allow us to see-through personal, social, and moral complexity-more clearly into the heart of things.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 31, 2006
    ISBN9781415931646
    Unavailable
    The Good Life
    Author

    Jay McInerney

    Jay McInerney is an American novelist, screenwriter and wine critic. His novels include Bright Lights, Big City, Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls and The Last of the Savages.

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    Reviews for The Good Life

    3.5/5

    166 ratings11 reviews

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    • 3/5
      A solid read but nothing special. The characters seemed very formulaic and the supporting characters should have had more of a voice. I feel the author fell short with what was a good idea and a promising beginning.
    • 5/5
      Loved it. No ifs, ands, or buts. Wasn't sure at first.....it starts with a dinner party and lots of name dropping of famous writers...but it's not about that. It's about relationships, love, loyalties, and how an external event (in this case, 9/11) can bring our lives into focus. What I liked about this novel was that it talked about individuals -- not a pulling together as a society -- and this made it different. I loved the deep character development, and felt I came to know the two main characters (Corrine and Luke) very well. So well that I predicted the ending, but in a good way -- the way you sometimes just know what a good friend or family member will do.
    • 4/5
      McInerney is the master of mixed emotions among complex characters. You can see where this one is going but the ending is realistic and satisfying.
    • 1/5
      This is the kind of crap that I do not want to read. Having to suffer through the plot of a redundant romance novel set in the wake of what has come to be a redundant catastrophic event was almost more than I could take. Frankly, I expected more from the author of Bright Lights, Big City. I was curious to see how his style has matured over the years. It's matured alright- right into its golden age. In fact, I'd say this book could be a eulogy for his style which must have died in the World Trade Center attack. I guess I was expecting something like Bret Ellis's Lunar Park, but instead I got...Nora Roberts.Heed the bad reviews. They are there for a reason.
    • 2/5
      The premise is interesting - how a group of well-to-do New Yorkers lives were changed by 9/11 - but the execution, plot development, and characters felt stale to me. I.e. more of an airport novel than a great read.
    • 4/5
      This is a story of the lives of the rich and the very rich in NYC just prior to 9/11 and then after 9/11. There are many interesting characters, but the book highlight two couples, Russell & Corrine and Luke & Sasha. Both of their marriages are foundering, with affairs by Russell and Sasha. Luke has an appointment scheduled with his best friend on the morning of 9/11 at Windows on the World. He cancels the appointment, but his friend doesn't get the message and dies in the tragedy. Luke is part of the initial relief effort, which is horrifying. The book is part lifestyles of the rich and famous and part explanation of what it was like to live in NYC during 9/11 and its aftermath. Great writing, but the characters were a little hard to relate to, but overall I enjoyed the book and did want to keep reading to find out what was going to happen.
    • 3/5
      I didn't know if I was going to be able to get through this book while reading the first part. Two families are profiled - one of which has a father in publishing while the mother is an aspiring screen writer. The schmoozing that goes on in the early chapters of this book was so self indulgent - I don't know if there is anything that I enjoy less than that kind of industry centered writing - it has been done to death.Anyhoo - the good news is that Part One was mercifully short and the novel got *much* better as it went along. All in all I thought it was well written though far from being one of McInerney's best. I found the end unsatisfying but the characters well drawn and the plot (for the most part) engaging.
    • 5/5
      At first the veneer of ultra-privileged Manhattanites annoyed me. Where, in mocking itself in too much world-weariness and too much cynicism, the authorial voice threatened to undercut sympathy, instead replacing it with the reader's impatience. But starting from the second part, it grew on me, and yes, the soul-searching of a fund manager got better. Smarter, I think, than Claire Messud's 9/11 novel The Emperor's Children.
    • 3/5
      One of the many 9-11 novels being written by the A-list of 90's/ought novelists right now. I really liked the first 3/4 of it. The characters were vivid and the storyline was magnetic. However, it needed another 50 pages to tie things up. Just when McInerney brings the story to a crescendo, he pulls the plug suddenly. It, frankly, was like being interrupted in the middle of sex. Things are great, then they stop suddenly and there's no point in starting again, and you're just pissed and bitter and soured on the experience.
    • 4/5
      I know I’m going to enjoy a novel if it starts with a dinner party, and this book had me hooked right from the first moments in the kitchen of Russell and Corrine’s New York apartment. McInerney’s funny, clever writing lulls you into the world of these people, their kids and their friends, and it’s not until page sixty-nine that you’re hit with the shock: it’s all been taking place on September 10th, 2001, and their world, the whole world, is about to erupt.I love this book for a lot of reasons. Not least because it hints that even in an age of terror, good things can still happen, and good people can still find each other.
    • 4/5
      This is somehow the first book I have read that was written about the effects of September 11th. I thought it was very well written, and it certainly was an interesting read. But, again, I am wondering where I got my latest bunch of recommendations: they all seem to have a common theme that I do not really care to read about. Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that it seems my latest run of books have main characters with a lack of morals.