In Jay McInerney’s sequel to Brightness Falls, he tells the story of 9/11’s effects on two New York families in the three months following the attack. The Good Life (2006), McInerney’s 7^th novel, brings his audience up to speed on the characters that he has written about previously without requiring them to have read its predecessor. At 353 pages, The Good Life is divided into three parts: Indian Summer, That Autumn and Holidays – the Before, After and Resolution of the characters’ lives around the September 11^th terrorist attack.

An author such as McInerney is a public figure, a celebrity in his own right.  McInerney has set himself up as the typical aging frat boy who forgot to make the turn from college days into the real world: party-hopping, model-dating, marriages and divorces. Noted literary legend Bret Easton Ellis, author of The Rules of Attraction and American Psycho, refers to McInerney as his “Toxic Twin”. Among other notable publications, McInerney co-wrote the screenplay for the television movie Gia, starring Angelina Jolie. Because of this celebrity status and his membership (along with Ellis) in the literary Brat Pack, his way of life comes under review by extension of a book review. It would be easy to put McInerney’s personal life under a microscope – he’s no stranger to being in the limelight by way of seeking it at every turn. Suffice it to say that The Good Life is the life that McInerney knows: his people, his town.

The Good Life begins on the evening of September 10, 2001 in Manhattan. Corrine Calloway, an aspiring screenplay writer and stay-at-home mom to her 6-year old twins, and her husband Russell, book editor, host a dinner party. Luke McGavock, ex-banker trying to re-assert his influence with his 15-year old daughter Ashley, and wife Sasha, fashion icon who uses charity functions to further her own personal agenda, attend a fund raiser for the Central Park Zoo. McInerney strives to depict these four main characters as typical ladder-climbing New Yorkers: self-serving, self-centered, unhappy with themselves and their spouses, ignorant to the struggles and hardships of their family and friends.

By skipping over the details of 9/11, images that are burned into his audiences’ memories, McInerney seamlessly segues into the morning of 9/12. “Ash Wednesday. The debris – the paper and sooty dust – had surged up the avenues and stopped at Duane Street” introduces the reader to the devastation wrought as Luke encounters Corrine for the first time after having spent the previous twenty-four hours digging in the remnants of the Twin Towers looking for a friend. Corrine befriends Luke by offering him a bottle of water, and from there a friendship is born based on need: the need to contribute to the recovery effort, and the need to help each other make sense out of the chaos of their lives.

In a world turned upside down by madness, the friendship takes the path of least resistance: an adulterous affair between Corrine and Luke. Corrine is confronted by Russell’s lengthy and sordid affair with a former co-worker, and Luke discovers that Sasha is involved with a past competitor. Lost along the way is 15-year old Ashley whose stability is compromised by her parents’ growing separateness and the everyday angst of teenage life. Ashley’s effort to regain Luke and Sasha’s attention propels the reader into the third part of The Good Life – Holidays.

The last 84 pages of The Good Life busies itself with wrapping up the obvious problems. As a result, the novel ends with the proverbial whimper as opposed to the resounding bang that would have been more satisfying. McInerney focuses on the emotional trauma of that time instead of neatly wrapping up the issues and topping it off with a bow.

McInerney approaches the tragedy of 9/11 from the standpoint that the citizens of the US were affected by these events as a group rather than as individuals; that everyone changed as a populace after 9/11. He addresses the devastation from the standpoint of those who lived through it – whether they lost a friend, a way of life or innocence. He shows how the same people struggled to return to their way of life as it was before 9/11. Socialites and white and blue collar workers come together in a unified effort to restore order and to rescue themselves.

While the old adage “don’t judge a book by its cover” should be respected, the jacket artwork of The Good Life is compelling: a plate, saucer, fork and spoon; a water glass half-filled;   jackets hanging on a display rack. All of these images are covered by the filthy residue that blanketed Manhattan – haunting and powerful reminders of the attack. McInerney tells the story of survivors who find comfort in each other as they attempt to shake the debris from their lives.