The bright young things of 1992’s Brightness Falls are now in their 60s in this verbose, clunky novel that seems more interested in lifestyle than inner livesMore than 40 years ago, Jay McInerney’s debut novel, Bright Lights, Big City, captured the glamour and desperation of 1980s New York. The book’s spectacular success launched its author’s career, earning him comparisons to F Scott Fitzgerald, another midwesterner with a complicated relationship with the US’s fantasies of wealth and social mobility. In 1992, Brightness Falls introduced readers to a fresh cast of young New Yorkers, but was primarily focused on a central couple, Corrine and Russell. McInerney returned to these characters in two subsequent novels; See You on the Other Side completes the tetralogy.The book opens at the start of 2020 with the bright young things now in their 60s, coping with erectile dysfunction and marital woes, and fretting about the job prospects of their twentysomething children. In ad...