Bright Lights, Big City

Jay McInerney

Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)

With the publication of Bright Lights, Big City in 1984, Jay McInerney became a literary sensation, heralded as the voice of a generation. The novel follows a young man, living in Manhattan as if he owned it, through nightclubs, fashion shows, editorial offices, and loft parties as he attempts to outstrip mortality and the recurring approach of dawn.

You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might become clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it might not... So begins our nameless hero's trawl through the brightly lit streets of Manhattan, sampling all this wonderland has to offer yet suspecting that tomorrow's hangover may be caused by more than simple excess. Bright Lights, Big City is an acclaimed classic which marked Jay McInerney as one of the major writers of our time.

'A brilliant and moving work - unique, refreshing, imaginatively powerful.'

Review by Ben Macnair (280921) Rating (8/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Book Source: Not Known
Rating 8/10
Written in the second person, Bright Lights Big City is a roller-coaster ride through New York nightlife, writing and research career on the downward trajectory, and problems with a former wife, and drink and drugs.

Very much of its time, the 1980's, the story is one of redemption and finding meaning in life at a difficult time. The unnamed central character goes through many events quickly, from the impending divorce of his model wife, who he humiliates at a fashion show, or the family he keeps at arm's length.

There are the storied, drug, drink and debauched scenes at many nightclubs, the loss of a job and what it does to identity, and the ill-thought plans for a ferret, injuring an unintended subject.

The book goes at a cracking pace, and at less than two hundred pages, it is a rapid read. We are shown the high prices paid for a lifestyle fuelled by late nights and excess, the strange characters he meets, who tell him of their lives, even more debauched, decadent, and stranger than his own.

The book is an excellent character study, which looks at the trouble we go to escape a past, which is always waiting to be addressed when we can no longer escape it. Although the lead character has done many ill-advised things, there is always the chance of redemption and second chances, which is where the novel ends.
Ben Macnair (28th September 2021)