Bright Lights, Big City

I'd heard a lot about this book in the past and it has been on my ‘to read' list for quite a while. McInerney's nameless hero is is caught up in a whirlwind of cocaine, drink and lies as he fails miserably at his job as a fact checker on a top New York magazine. This dates the book as everything is done by hand and telephone, no internet, Google or Wikipedia here!

His life becomes more of a mess as the books goes on and it's hard to really sympathise with him. The book isn't as funny as it thinks it is, nor as sharp, but it's a quick fun read but without the dark heart of Bret Easton Ellis's contemporary novel, Less Than Zero.

I found this novel quite surprising towards the end. It would be easy to dismiss this as a product of its time, although witty and shocking in parts, but it was saved by the tenderness of the portrayal of his relationship with his mother. The audiobook had a good narrator.