Book Review: Brightness Falls by Jay McInerney

June 22, 2000

Flawed Falls feels flat

Brightness Falls feels like a novel it's author, Jay McInerney, considers his most mature work to date. Going out of his way to sound like a grown-up, his prose is all but indecipherable. Seemingly going on forever, his sentences consist of too many thirty-cent words, the likes of which a child might memorize right before taking his seat at the adults' table. I constantly had to go back and re-read entire paragraphs just to figure out what simple action or description he was trying to get across. What I suspect the problem is here is that McInerney took the reviews of his previous novel, Story of My Life, too much to heart - basically, "grow up," the critics yelled - and is now bending over backwards only wanting to impress. I did manage to stick with the book until it's end, but just barely.

Set in Manhattan during early 1987, the novel introduces us to a small circle of friends just entering their thirties, none of whom are quite yet comfortable holding down the title of "adult." College sweethearts now married, Russell and Corrine Calloway are at the center of the group and suspected by all to be the perfect couple. Their marriage not as solid as people think, Russell has an eye for the ladies and an even bigger ambition in buying out and someday owning the small publishing company he now reluctantly slaves at. Corrine, unaware of both Russell's infidelities and best friend Jeff's life-long feelings towards her, spends her days working on Wall Street, enjoying an income that was only possible during those fleeting greed-is-good late eighties. Unbeknownst to all of them, there's a god-awful shape-shifting storm on the horizon, alternately taking the form of a stock market crash, AIDs and simple infidelity that will rock their worlds to it's very foundation and change their lives forever.

Not only are all of these characters unlikable, they're downright annoying. Russell is a complete jerk from page one, wanting to sleep with every single woman he passes on the street. His flirting with another woman in an art gallery immediately following a major argument with Corrine (that he started!) was the final nail in my opinion of him. The fact that McInerney sets him up as the hero/dreamer of the group, the one who, in his pursuit to buy out his own company, sets his sights the highest and eventually falls the lowest, is simply a bad move on his part. Considering Russell's character throughout the whole novel, there is no endeavor he could take on and fail at that would have garnered my sympathy.

Even more pitiful is Corrine. Her seemingly undying devotion to Russell-the-snake quickly grows tiresome and pathetic. In my mind, there's nothing more disgusting than a bad man except the weak individuals that choose to follow him. Even more unforgivable is Corrine's constant lapse of intelligence. Suspecting that Russell is sneaking around her behind her back, the conclusions she jumps to about whom he might be cheating with are always wrong! Another incident finds them discussing possibly having a child. His business take-over not going as well as hoped, Russell suggests that, financially, it may not be a good time for them to have a kid. When Corrine counters with, "You don't have to be rich to have a child, you know," I rolled my eyes and thought, great, another unwanted child born to a couple in a bad marriage who're $100 million in debt. That's exactly what we need more of. Her suspicions of what kind of man Russell is, combined with her refusal to come to terms with how below herself he is, coupled with her constant wrong decisions are the three strikes that put her out of my fancy. I could even play devil's advocate here and suggest this is only how I perceived these two but, throughout the book from page one on, I never saw any evidence that either character changes or evolves or grows. Major mistake from an author asking you to spend almost 400 pages with them.

Two good friends of Mr. and Mrs. Calloway come off slightly more sympathetic but McInerney's fumblings eventually do them in as well. Washington Lee is perhaps the most interesting character to follow. A co-worker of Russell's, Washington seems to have more of an issue with his blackness than anyone else around him. It was fun for a while watching him try to balance his ties and loyalties between the very white company he works for and the black community who demand he go to greater lengths to better represent them. But even he's done in by his inclusion into two plot points so contrived and unbelievable, so jaw-droppingly awful, that the character is utterly tainted from those evens on. I could no longer look forward to this character's presence for fear of what McInerney might next have in store for him. The first incident finds Washington excusing himself from an uppity dinner party to use the upstairs bathroom. On the way there, he bumps into the very young, very drunk daughter of the party's host. In this endlessly drawn out passage, the girl tries to seduce him and he winds up with her very expensive watch in his pocket. Unbelievable (Washington seems to be going out of his way to make himself look bad), unfunny (the broad farce of things going from bad to worse real quick falls painfully flat) and pointless (after the incident, the daughter and watch are never mentioned again). The second faux pas comes late in the novel when Washington pulls out a real-looking squirt gun (filled with vodka) as he passes some known racist thugs. His eventual explanation for doing so, "I was thirsty," prompted me to throw down the book and flee my home seeking alternative entertainment.

Finally, old friend Jeff stands at the sidelines offering quips but never conversation and, as such, never materializes into anything more than supposed comic relief. Mostly making smart-ass puns that are neither clever nor wise, the character is tedious. The only one of the group seemingly without interest in takeovers or money, Jeff's failure to get our empathy is perhaps Brightness Falls' biggest flaw, as I believe he was meant to be the heart of the novel, someone the readers were supposed to be able to count on amidst all the crazy actions and attitudes of the times. But, as written, he's not. His eventual declaration of love towards Corrine late in the novel struck me only as self-serving. His revelation of a long ago affair between himself and her that took place before she and Russell were married is handled poorly. Russell reacts as if it happened only yesterday and McInerney seems to suggest that this now puts the couple on morally even grounds. As if.

Do I like any of the characters here? Hardly. Trina Cox, a mergers and acquisitions barbarian who arranges for Russell to buy his company then attempts to bed him, is as shallow and single-minded as her last name is obvious and juvenile. Victor Propp, an eccentric Tom Wolfe-like author who's better at creating interest in his upcoming manuscript than in actually delivering the thing, is the one to initially suggest to Russell that he buy his company but is the first to desert him when things get shaky. Corrine's mother is a selfish drunken lout who's happy sidling up to anyone currently doing her daughter harm. I did like Delia, the suicidal patient Jeff goes through a rehab center with. Her surrendering to Jeff a piece of sharp glass she wasn't supposed to have carries more emotional weight than almost anything the main characters ever do. Alas, she is but a minor, minor character. A suggestion to Mr. McInerney: bring her back.

Plot wise, not much happens here but it was interesting to watch the minor, then major events leading up to the big Wall Street market crash of '87. McInerney subtlety conjures an almost palatable dark force that seems to be invisibly inching itself towards these people with every page we turn (at one point, one character feels it and likens it to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse approaching over their shoulder). Simultaneously, the Colloway's crumbling marriage nicely parallels what's happening in the real world and we get the feeling that no one will come out of this book intact. In fact, there were times I kept reading only because I hoped to see at least some of the characters here get the comeuppance I thought deserved. Somehow, I doubt this was the author's intent.

The shallow, redundant Story of My Life was a step back from the poignant lost innocence that was Bright Lights, Big City and the worldly confidence behind Ransom, McInerney's second and third novels, respectively. But even that slim excuse for a novel is preferable to the ponderous writing and unsympathetic characters of Brightness Falls. The happy conclusion to this review, of course, is that McInerney later went on to write the excellent Last of the Savages, his real first "adult" work. More mature and multi-layered than 100 Falls, Savages more than makes up for the misstep that is this novel. McInerney can still count me as a fan for life; almost all his past work possess far too many good qualities for that to change anytime soon. I don't know what he's working on now but I'll still be there on it's street date. With any luck, McInerney-the-real will be, too.