The Good Life By Jay McInerney Bloomsbury, 368pp. £16.99
The events of September 11th, 2001, have assumed a brooding presence in the background of several recent works of fiction, but it's hardly surprising that few writers have chosen as yet to tackle them head on. Who would dare wade into such a recent, media-saturated event without fear of slipping into bathos, sentimentality or - God forbid - mere journalism?
Step forward Jay McInerney, a writer not previously known for tackling big, difficult issues, preferring instead the company of the frothy and the frivolous.
Bright Lights, Big City, McInerney's debut novel of cocaine-fuelled male angst in 1980s Manhattan, found its place among the key signifiers of that decade. But, like big shoulder pads and red braces, his star has waned since. Unlike his contemporary and pal, Bret Easton Ellis, he has found it difficult to chart a path beyond the ephemera of his early work.
Some argue that it's McInerney's misfortune his literary career has been overshadowed by that first book. Some have even compared him to F Scott Fitzgerald. In case there was any doubt, this new novel shows how laughable that comparison is.
The Good Life opens on the evening of September 10th, 2001, with Corrine and Russell Calloway preparing for a dinner party in their Tribeca loft. Russell's job with a publishing company allows him to hob-nob with the New York glitterati, without offering commensurate financial rewards. Corrine has just returned to the workforce after several years at home caring for the couple's young twins.
Meanwhile, on the Upper East Side, millionaire financier Luke McGavock is in the grip of an existential crisis, having taken a sabbatical in an attempt to rediscover the purpose of his life. This endeavour has earned the disapproval of his wife, Sasha, a high-maintenance socialite who may or may not be having an affair with one of New York's richest and nastiest men.
Some of these characters first appeared in McInerney's best novel, Brightness Falls, which portrayed the hubris and narcissism of the late 1980s. Then, they were giddily riding a wave of money and glamour, before falling to earth with the Black Wednesday stock market crash. Here, they are presented as specimens of mild middle-aged decline, their horizons lowered, their appetites reined in. Illegal stimulants have been replaced by foodie fetishes. Goodbye Peruvian marching powder, hello pink Peruvian salt. Were it not for that ominous date, we might reasonably expect nothing more than a portrait of a low-key crisis of the mid-life kind.
But the next morning Luke cheats death by narrowly missing an appointment at the Windows on the World restaurant in the World Trade Centre.
In the chaotic aftermath of the towers' collapse, he meets Corrine and, in the days that follow, the two begin working together at an ad-hoc soup kitchen near Ground Zero.
Some might question the taste of using the deaths of 3,000 people as the springboard for a tale of extra-marital shenanigans among Manhattan's upper-middle classes. But such trifling considerations are soon forgotten, because, frankly, The Good Life is just not good enough to get worked up about.
In taking 9/11 as his deus ex machina, McInerney appears to be trying, at the age of 50, to grow up a little, but the results are disappointingly facile. Most of his protagonists are as self-absorbed and materialistic as ever, except for Corrine and Luke, who are endowed with a preternatural goodness and nobility that renders them as interesting as wet sand. The affair itself is detailed in prose usually found in books with embossed covers.
Elsewhere, characterisation is cursory and one-dimensional. When it comes to charting the disappointments of middle age, McInerney is no John Updike. And, in his observations on Manhattan's pecking order, he's no Tom Wolfe. Too infatuated with the social milieu he describes to dissect it with any real venom, he yearns unconvincingly for an imagined simpler, better US of his youth.
Down at the soup kitchen, his hero finds it in the homeliest of American culinary classics: "It had probably been 20 years - years of foie gras with poached pears, curry with mango chutney, and other culinary yin and yang, fat and sweet permutations - since Luke had actually bitten into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich."
Energised by Ground Zero, the affair and his encounter with real American cuisine, Luke resolves to reconcile himself with his estranged teenage daughter, and with his mother. Meanwhile, Corrine is faced with the lies at the heart of her own marriage. What will become of them, we are invited to wonder. But by the time the final scene unfurls, we find ourselves wishing that Luke had made that breakfast appointment after all.
Hugh Linehan is Entertainment Editor of The Irish Times
Hugh Linehan
Fiction