Jay McInerney Omnibus - "Story of My Life", "Brightness Falls"

The Story of My Life; For twenty-year-old Alison, Manhattan is a playground.

She attends Lee Strasberg's Acting School (when she can get the fees together) and is smart, sarcastic and sussed.

Her life is a carnival of gossip and midnight sessions of Truth or Dare, and her cocaine-bashing friends and flirting flatmates all crave satiation.

She's fallen deeply in lust with Dean, although she can't do anything about it until that nasty present Skip Pendleton left her with clears up.

Story of her life, right? But in a world of no consequences or cares, Alison seems to be heading for a meltdown.

Brightness Falls; Their moment was of the brief, shining sort when everything seemed possible: the gold rush of the 1980s, when the best and the brightest vied with the worst and most craven for riches, fame and the love of beautiful people.

With all the force and cunning enterprise of Manhattan itself, Brightness Falls captures lives-in-the-making: men and women confronting their sudden middle-age with wit and low behaviour, or fear and confusion, and occasionally even a little honesty and decency.

None of them, ever, would be the same again...