Redemption doesn’t come easy, but there’s always hope where there’s a surface to scratch. If you’ve ever found yourself somewhere you shouldn’t be doing something you shouldn’t do to forget something you’ll only wind up remembering even more painfully than when you began you know what I mean. The first chapter is one of my favorite things I’ve ever read.

Edition Details Professional Reviews Awards. With the publication of Bright Lights, Big City in 1984, Jay McInerney became a literary sensation, heralded as the voice of a generation. We ride the highs, fleeting and illusory, only to be left with the soul-crushing lows. Buy a cheap copy of Bright Lights, Big City book by Jay McInerney.

We witness the shallowness and the emotional bankruptcy. He captures the vapid decadence of 1980s New York perfectly, but he doesn’t glorify it. In the hands of a lesser writer this trick would come off as a cheap gimmick, but McInerney is a fantastic writer. The fact that it works is what makes it such a great book. The first thing you notice about Bright Lights, Big City is that it’s written in the second person. Things are not going well and they’re just going to keep getting worse until you figure out what it is you’re looking for. All messed up and no place to go.” You’re looking for answers in all the wrong places. The last time you heard from her she was on assignment, modeling in Paris. You keep thinking that maybe, just maybe, she’ll come back.

You have yet to share with your colleagues, friends, and family members the fact that your wife has left you. Unsurprisingly, this turns out to not be the most effective coping mechanism. At night you drink and snort as much coke as you possibly can in a futile attempt to forget that your wife has recently left you. You are an unnamed protagonist who spends his days working as a fact checker for a well-known, unnamed New York magazine and dreaming of being a successful writer. Review by Morris, Librarian at Bridgewater Library

Bright lights big city book review