New York state of mind

Devotees of American novelist Jay McInerney’s Russell Calloway series will enjoy this concluding volume in what is now officially a quartet.

Granted, these fans account for a small subset of the reading public. Novels about trendy New York City literary publishers, who are also gourmands and wine snobs, do not generate Harry Potter-esque sales figures.

That said, the Calloway novels are far from esoteric in their unpretentious prose and humanistic themes about the enduring importance of family and friends.

They are easy-to-digest commercial fiction for readers who prefer literary name-dropping to, say, locating murder clues in detective novels.

Still best known for his 1984 debut, the cocaine comedy Bright Lights, Big City, McInerney introduced his Calloway alter ego in 1993’s Brightness Falls. He returned to him story in The Good Life in 2007 and then again in 2016’s Bright, Precious Days.

In See You on the Other Side, Russell and his wife Corrine are now in their early 60s, as handsome and glamorous as ever. The novel opens in early March 2020 as they attend a 35th anniversary party for their best friends, bumping elbows instead of kissing, “trying out this new greeting in a time of incipient plague.”

Yes, this is another COVID-set novel, and in fact more documentary-like than many. McInerney records the shutting down of New York City through Russell and Corrine’s eyes.

The couple endures illness, social isolation and — gasp! — the closure of their favourite restaurants. This latter tragedy hits particularly close to home since their daughter, Storey, now a 30ish-year-old chef, has just opened her own stylish Manhattan eatery.

Her twin brother, meanwhile, is working for Bernie Sanders’ ill-fated presidential campaign, which gives McInerney licence for much heartfelt Trump bashing.

Liberal Canadian readers who might feel guilty about consuming one more American novel (while eschewing U.S. travel or eating California strawberries) can take comfort in knowing that McInerney hates the Orange Man as much as they do: “The tabloid clown, the king of kitsch, the cartoon version of a tycoon, who had been a running joke for (the Calloways’) entire New York life.”

McInerney’s old buddy cocaine also makes a reappearance as a plot device, as does extramarital sex. But befitting Russell and Corrine’s maturing points of view, neither gets played for comedy.

The novel’s title refers to a sign they see on a COVID-shuttered restaurant. But McInerney also has a metaphysical meaning in mind, as the novel moves toward its sobering conclusion.

It wouldn’t be a McInerney novel without its elegiac prose about Manhattan and its show-offy knowledge of brand-name luxury items and expensive wine. He does, after all, have a long side hustle as a wine columnist.

McInerney indulges his annoying habit of using dialogue to enable back story. At one point, a lifelong friend of Storey’s fiancée asks him: “I’ve always thought it was strange that you’ve known Storey pretty much all your life, and you at some point became romantic. How does that happen?”

How, indeed — but don’t lifelong friends know these things?

McInerney is now 71 and over the hill as a novelist. His obituaries, when the time comes, will all reference Bright Lights, Big City in the top paragraph.

But this knee-jerk reaction will not negate the fact that the Calloway quartet is his finest achievement.

It might not be timeless, but it is still one worth toasting with a glass of expensive wine.

Morley Walker is a retired Free Press editor and writer.