''Bright, Precious Days'' is a 2016 novel by American author

Jay McInerney John Barrett "Jay" McInerney Jr. (; born January 13, 1955) is an American novelist, screenwriter, editor, and columnist. His novels include '' Bright Lights, Big City'', ''Ransom'', '' Story of My Life'', '' Brightness Falls'', and ''The Last o ...

. It is his third novel about Corrine and Russell Calloway, a couple who live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Like the previous two novels in the series, ''Bright, Precious Days'' is set against the backdrop of a historical event, in this case the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of market decline in economies around the world that occurred from late 2007 to mid-2009.

. The novel received mostly negative reviews.

Development and inspiration

The novel is the third in a trilogy about a couple, Corrine and Russell Calloway, and follows the 2006 novel '' The Good Life''. McInerney chose to focus three novels on the Calloways, as he became "fond of them". Drawing the term from Philip Roth's novel ''

The Counterlife ''The Counterlife'' (1986) is a novel by the American author Philip Roth. It is the fourth full-length novel to feature the fictional novelist Nathan Zuckerman. When ''The Counterlife'' was published, Zuckerman had most recently appeared in a n ...

'', McInerney has said that Russell’s life exists as a “counterlife” to his own, allowing him "...to continue exploring the life of this city" and to avoid writing autobiographical sequels to his first (and best-known) work, '' Bright Lights, Big City'', which focused on the club culture and nightlife of

Downtown Manhattan Lower Manhattan, also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York City, is the southernmost part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. The neighborhood is the historical birthplace of New York City and for its first 225 years was the ...

in the 1980s. This change in focus also allowed McInerney to produce a more "panoramic" novel about New York, one that "encompassed a much broader picture of contemporary life". The idea that an affair between Corrine and Luke McGavock, a banker, "wasn’t really over" after concluding ambiguously in ''The Good Life'' inspired McInerney to write ''Bright, Precious Days''.

Reception

Critics were mostly negative in their appraisal of the work. Alex Preston, writing for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' said that the "...novel that lurches from party to party like a gin-drunk socialite, filling the journeys between fundraisers with narrative revelations that fizzle out before they are felt".

References

2016 American novels Great Recession novels Novels set in Manhattan Upper East Side Alfred A. Knopf books {{2010s-hist-novel-stub