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The Good Life
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Hailed by Newsweek as “a superb and humane social critic” with, according to The Wall Street Journal, “all the true instincts of a major novelist,” Jay McInerney unveils a story of love, family, conflicting desires, and catastrophic loss in his most powerfully searing work thus far.
Clinging to a semiprecarious existence in TriBeCa, Corrine and Russell Calloway have survived a separation and are thoroughly wonderstruck by young twins whose provenance is nothing less than miraculous, even as they contend with the faded promise of a marriage tinged with suspicion and deceit.
Meanwhile, several miles uptown and perched near the top of the Upper East Side’s social register, Luke McGavock has postponed his accumulation of wealth in an attempt to recover the sense of purpose now lacking in a life that often gives him pause - especially with regard to his teenage daughter, whose wanton extravagance bears a horrifying resemblance to her mother’s. But on a September morning, brightness falls horribly from the sky, and people worlds apart suddenly find themselves working side by side at the devastated site, feeling lost anywhere else, yet battered still by memory and regret, by fresh disappointment and unimaginable shock.
What happens, or should happen, when life stops us in our tracks, or our own choices do? What if both secrets and secret needs, long guarded steadfastly, are finally revealed? What is the good life? Posed with astonishing understanding and compassion, these questions power a novel rich with characters and events, both comic and harrowing, revelatory about not only New York after the attacks but also the toll taken on those lucky enough to have survived them.
Wise, surprising, and, ultimately, heart-stoppingly redemptive, The Good Life captures lives that allow us to see - through personal, social, and moral complexity - more clearly into the heart of things.
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Overall
- Scott
- 08-30-06
The Bridges of Why Am I Reading This Crap
So, I’ve got this little disorder. Just this one: Once I begin reading a book, I am compelled to finish it. Regardless of how much I dislike it, I continue to pick up the book… continue to read.
After finishing Brett Easton Ellis’ excellent Lunar Park, I wanted to read something by Jay Mcinerny. Jay is a character in Lunar Park and is best known for his breakthrough novel Bright Lights, Big City. Not sure what posessed me, but rather than going for the easy bet and reading BL, BC, I made the error of picking out The Good Life, Jay’s latest.
Bleh.
The Good Life reads like Bridges of Madison County for the middle-aged urbanite. Set in NY, NY around the time of 9/11, the novel tells the story of a couple of priveledged New Yorkers too lazy to work at their own marriages that fall easily into illicit love amongst the Ground Zero soup kitchens. If "illicit love" makes you think "Harlequin Romance", then you’ve got the right idea: there’s enough trashy bodice-ripping in there to satisfy the requirements of the genre.
There’s also a large helping of grief porn if you’re into that sort of thing. The jumpers, the flee-ers, the diggers and the body bags… Jay’s got it covered.
Learn from my mistake. Read Bright Lights, Big City. It really is as good as you’ve heard.
3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- L. Fadden
- 08-08-06
A disappointment
The first half showed great promise. The second half was like a harlequin romance. I only kept listening because I thought for sure it would get back on track. It didn't.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Dave
- 03-13-06
Well writen, but ultimately pathetic
A book about a bunch a self obsessed rich New Yorkers who keep lameting that "The Good Life" has come to an end right around the time 9/11 happened. I mean come on, can you really say that the stock market crash of the eighties was just as bad as 9/11??
1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Alnia Perpoz
- 08-18-09
The ending is "To die..."
Witty and insightful, with the hand on the pulse of current NYC culture, this novel is attractive for its portraits of NYC middle and upper classes.
After 9/11, America (for a short time) fell in love with its rich, alongside its firefighters and police officers. Sex was another prominent response to the tragedy. This book explores both in a compelling way.
The plot is borrowed from a vacation romance novel - rich boy, poor girl fall in love while on a break from their regular life. The dramatic tension comes from their realization that the state is temporary. Shmear a layer of 9/11 on it and voula - you got The Good Life. Inane.
But the intelligence of cultural observations and penetration of emotional complexity hangs enough meat on the plot to make it a very palatable read. And the ending is to die...
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Overall
- Chuck
- 06-01-09
Great book and great narration
Jay McInerney captures the New York scene post 9/11 with great insight. He seems to know the city and its characters and portrays them with great accuracy. Enjoyed the book a great deal and also enjoyed the narration.
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Overall
- Deborah
- 10-31-06
DECENT
This story was decent, nothing more.
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Overall
- booklover
- 03-16-06
wish it wouldn't end
This is the first novel I've encountered that uses 9/11 as a setting with no political intent or agenda, just an interesting, metaphorical background to an engrossing love story. If you want to know what it's like to be an upscale, Manhattan "ordinary" family during 2001, you can't get any more real than this. Portrait of private school teen life is particularly (and sadly) bullseye. Bravo.
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Overall
- Carolann Moore
- 03-02-06
Could have been so much better.
This is a good story...however the author has a link with former president Bill Clinton for his fascination with one particular activity in the White House. The author refers to this no less than 50 times throughout the book. Also the 4 letter word is used ...every other. I don't know many people who are obsessed with...or use the 4 letter word in casual conversation constantly. At least not educated people who live the "Good Life:" as the author tries to convey. The author has much more potential than is displayed in this story. The conversation takes away from the tenderness in the story.
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The Leftovers
- By: Tom Perrotta
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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What if - whoosh, right now, with no explanation - a number of us simply vanished? Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down? That’s what the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, who lost many of their neighbors, friends and lovers in the event known as the Sudden Departure, have to figure out. Because nothing has been the same since it happened - not marriages, not friendships, not even the relationships between parents and children.
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The title is the best part
- By Pamela Harvey on 09-03-11
By: Tom Perrotta
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The Lost Language of Cranes
- By: David Leavitt
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the 1980s against the backdrop of a swiftly gentrifying Manhattan, The Lost Language of Cranes tells the story of 25-year-old Philip, who realizes he must come out to his parents after falling in love for the first time with a man. Philip's parents are facing their own crisis: pressure from developers and the loss of their longtime home.
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Bildugsroman for a gay man
- By Marco on 03-30-14
By: David Leavitt
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The Nest
- By: Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a 19-year-old waitress as his passenger.
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The Nest is a Complete Mess
- By Wendi on 04-13-16
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The Sunshine Sisters
- By: Jane Green
- Narrated by: Jane Green
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Ronni Sunshine left London for Hollywood to become a beautiful, charismatic star of the silver screen. But at home she was a narcissistic, disinterested mother who alienated her three daughters. As soon as possible, tomboy Nell fled her mother's overbearing presence to work on a farm and find her own way in the world as a single mother. The target of her mother's criticism, Meredith never felt good enough, thin enough, pretty enough. Her life took her to London - and into the arms of a man whom she may not even love.
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I couldn't do it
- By Josie on 06-23-17
By: Jane Green
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In Short Measures
- Three Novellas
- By: Michael Ruhlman
- Narrated by: Lydia Mackay, Robert McCollum, Lauren Davis
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In his three novellas, In Short Measures, Strong Conspirators, and Sally Forth, Michael Ruhlman delves deeply into the nuanced complexity of romantic and sexual love - and the inevitable evolution of the heart over the span of years and decades. Each novella asks questions about the nature of love in terms of loyalty and fidelity - what are one's obligations toward one's spouse, one's family, and one's heart?
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Heartbreaking
- By Amazon Customer on 08-23-21
By: Michael Ruhlman
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A Visit from the Goon Squad
- By: Jennifer Egan
- Narrated by: Roxana Ortega
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other’s pasts, the listener does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.
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Deep and dazzling novel, brilliantly read!
- By J. W. Coop on 06-29-19
By: Jennifer Egan
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Losing the Light
- A Novel
- By: Andrea Dunlop
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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When 30-year-old Brooke Thompson unexpectedly runs into a man from her past, she's plunged headlong into memories she's long tried to forget about the year she spent in France following a disastrous affair with a professor.
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Right book for right time
- By Pamela G. on 08-06-18
By: Andrea Dunlop
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The Whole World Over
- By: Julia Glass
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of the beloved novel Three Junes comes a rich and commanding story about the accidents, both grand and small, that determine our choices in love and marriage. Greenie Duquette, openhearted yet stubborn, devotes most of her passionate attention to her Greenwich Village bakery and her four-year-old son, George. Her husband, Alan, seems to have fallen into a midlife depression, while Walter, a traditional gay man who has become her closest professional ally, is nursing a broken heart.
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Loved it...But
- By krinreno on 11-05-06
By: Julia Glass
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Vigil Harbor
- A Novel
- By: Julia Glass
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Kimberly Farr, Jeremy Davidson, and others
- Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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A decade from now, in the historic town of Vigil Harbor, there's been a rash of divorces among the yacht-club set; a marine biologist despairs at the state of the world; a spurned wife is bent on revenge; and the renowned architect Austin Kepner pursues a passion for building homes designed to withstand the escalating fury of relentless storms. Austin's stepson, Brecht, has dropped out of college in New York and returned home after narrowly escaping one of the terrorist acts that, like hurricanes, have become increasingly common.
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Great Parable About Modern Times
- By Anonymous User on 09-14-22
By: Julia Glass
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The Ramblers
- A Novel
- By: Aidan Donnelley Rowley
- Narrated by: Erica Sullivan
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the most magical parts of Manhattan - the Upper West Side, Central Park, Greenwich Village - The Ramblers explores the lives of three lost souls bound together by friendship and family. During the course of one fateful Thanksgiving week, a time when emotions run high and being with family can be a mixed blessing, Rowley's sharply defined characters explore the moments when decisions are deliberately made, choices accepted, and pasts reconciled.
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Lovely Portrait of The City
- By Dingo27 on 02-19-16
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Indiscretion
- A Novel
- By: Charles Dubow
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Harry and Madeleine Winslow have been blessed with talent, money, and charm. Harry is a National Book Award-winning author on the cusp of greatness. Madeleine is a woman of sublime beauty and grace whose elemental goodness and serenity belie a privileged upbringing. Bonded by deep devotion, they share a love that is both envied and admired. The Winslows play host to a coterie of close friends and acolytes eager to bask in their golden radiance, whether they are in their bucolic East Hampton cottage, abroad in Rome thanks to Harry's writing grant, or in their comfortable Manhattan brownstone.
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Henry James is probably not even bothering to roll
- By Darwin8u on 04-06-13
By: Charles Dubow
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By Nightfall
- By: Michael Cunningham
- Narrated by: Hugh Dancy
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Peter and Rebecca Harris are mid-40s denizens of Manhattan’s SoHo, nearing the apogee of careers in the arts. With a spacious loft and lively friends, they are admirable urbanites with every reason, it seems, to be happy. Then Rebecca’s much younger brother, Ethan, shows up for a visit. A beautiful, beguiling 23-year-old with a history of drug problems, he is wayward, at loose ends, looking for direction. And in his presence, Peter finds himself questioning the entire world he has so carefully constructed.
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Tedious, Self-absorbed, and Pretentious
- By Dennis on 11-03-10
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Small Mercies
- A Novel
- By: Eddie Joyce
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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A startling and tender portrait of one family’s struggle to make peace with their son’s death. An ingeniously layered narrative, told over the course of one week, Eddie Joyce’s debut novel masterfully depicts an Italian-Irish American family on Staten Island and their complicated emotional history. Ten years after the loss of Bobby - the Amendola family’s youngest son - everyone is still struggling to recover from the firefighter’s unexpected death.
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Poignant Story and Tremendous Writing
- By Stephen Venable on 04-14-15
By: Eddie Joyce
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What We Were Promised
- By: Lucy Tan
- Narrated by: Jennifer Lim
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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This book is a debut by a Chinese-American writer about a prodigal son whose unexpected return forces his newly wealthy family to confront secrets and unfulfilled promises. After years of chasing the American dream, the Zhen family has moved back to China. Settling into a luxurious serviced apartment in Shanghai, Wei, Lina, and their daughter, Karen, join an elite community of Chinese-born, Western-educated professionals who have returned to a radically transformed city. What We Were Promised explores the question of what we owe to our country, our families, and ourselves.
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A solid book about an unfamiliar topic
- By Nanette L. Stearns on 09-20-18
By: Lucy Tan
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Younger
- By: Pamela Redmond Satran
- Narrated by: Meghan Wolf
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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She's old enough to be his mother. Alice has always looked young for her age, even with her graying hair and her dowdy New Jersey housewife style. Make that ex-housewife: Now that her husband's gone and her daughter is grown, Alice is in desperate need of a whole new life. So she lets her best friend Maggie, a hip New York City artist, transform her on New Year's Eve. Soon, thanks to the wonders of hair dye and tight jeans, Alice looks really young, as one night in a Manhattan bar confirms.
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It depends on where you're coming from...
- By AudioAddict on 11-28-15