How It Ended

New and Collected Stories

By: Jay McInerney

Narrated by: Ray Porter

Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's Summary

Jay McInerney's characters include a young woman holed up in a remote cabin while her married boyfriend campaigns for the highest of all offices; a family celebrating the holidays while mired in loss year after year; a couple whose experiments in sexuality cross every line imaginable; an actor visiting his wife in rehab; a doctor treating a variety of convicts and his own criminal past; and a young socialite who is called home to nurse her mother. We also meet Russell and Corinne Calloway again, who featured in Jay's novels Brightness Falls and The Good Life.

©2009 Bright Lights Big City, Inc. (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic Reviews

"[N]obody can channel urban strivers and their shallow pursuits as well as McInerney." (Publishers Weekly)

“Extremely entertaining. . . elegant, subtle, shapely and reflective. . . . Perfect specimens.” (The New York Times)

“Brim[s] with all the attendant guilt and thrills and self-defeating impulses of an extramarital tryst…. Brilliant.” (The Boston Globe)

Pretty Good, but not quite there

I am a Jay McInerney fan and read most of his work. While not at all the same style writer as Ian McEwan [there's a lightweight jaunty cynicism to McInerney thankfully absent in the richness of McEwan] McInerney's work often has the same impact on me as McEwan - you read an entire novel...not sure you like it or how good it really is...but then you come across a single page or a gloriously constructed single paragraph that gives it all meaning and pulls everything together in a manner you can only say "wow" to. These McInerney stories here are missing that coupe de grace for the most part. The audio is fine and the narration solid, but there's nothing to grab on to, no "wow" factor and I can't think of a single story I wanted to listen to twice [no Updike-quality to cherish here]. The coke and sex seem dated and tiresome and each and every story revolves around marital affairs. Life is not that singular. The torture of life expressed in humor - a bit like M.A.S.H. Worth a credit? Maybe, maybe not. If you've read McInerney's work you already know these stories.

Fantastic narrator, delicious writing

I loved these stories--masterful writing, and the narrator is perfect: captures every irony and nuance, does a particularly good--often hilarious--job with the female characters.

Dear me, couldn’t get past the first story.

I couldn’t get past the first hour. After 45 minutes of the smoking quitting, I turned it off.