Brightness Falls Summary
Jay Mclnerney

Everything you need to understand or teach Brightness Falls by Jay Mclnerney.

  • Brightness Falls Summary & Study Guide

Brightness Falls Summary

Brightness Falls is centered on two young married professionals in Manhattan, Corrinne and Russell Calloway, who together exemplify the temptations facing many in the 1980s. Corrinne is a broker, which involves her in pursuit of the "fast money" said to be almost tangibly humming in the air of New York City, while Russell is an editor at a small but prestigious publishing house. Although their friends consider them to be a haven from the maelstrom of modern city life, a truly stable couple, the events of the novel show them to be as fallible and as gullible as their fellows. Russell, especially, who after some reversals at the publishing house decides to spearhead an unfriendly takeover bid by a corporate raider, succumbs to the lure of easy credit and 1980s opportunism, with tragic consequences.

The characters in Brightness Falls, older than many of those in earlier Mclnerney novels...

(read more from the Short Guide)

Study Pack