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Story of My Life | 
| Author: Jay Mcinerney
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $13.00
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Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 297896
Media: Paperback
Pages: 208
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 0679722572
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679722571
ASIN: 0679722572
Publication Date: August 28, 1989
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: A tradition of southern quality and service. All books guaranteed at the Atlanta Book Company.
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Product Description
In his breathlessly paced new novel Jay McInerney revisits the nocturnal New York of Bright Lights, Big City. Alison Poole, twenty going on 40,000, is a budding actress already fatally well versed in hopping the clubs, shopping Chanel falling in and out of, lust, and abusing other people's credit cards. As Alison races toward emotional breakdown, McInerney gives us a hilarious yet oddly touching portrait of a postmodern Holly Golightly coming to terms with a world in which everything is permitted and nothing really matters."Jay McInerney has proven himself not only a brilliant stylist but a master of characterization, with a keen eye for incongruities of urban life. -- the New York Times Book Review "[McInerney's] talent for capturing the nuances and idiosyncrasies of our culture[ in Bright Lights, Big City] is even more powerful evident in Story of My Life... Underneath Alison's hip, party-girl exterior and flippant vernacular is McInerney's disturbing depiction or a young woman caught in the traumatic reality of her times." -- San Francisco Chronicle McInerney's Story of My Life is quite as brilliant as Bright Lights, Big City and a lot funnier." -- the Sunday Times (london)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 39 more reviews...
It's Like a Train Wreck -- You Gotta Watch December 1, 2008
Alan Scrivener (suburban San Deigo, CA)
I find it instructive to contrast this novel with Joseph Conrad's 1904 classic "Nostromo," which I wanted to read for the trivial reason that the space ship in the movie "Alien" is named after it. I carried it around for days and couldn't get past the second page. Then when I got "The Story of My Life" I decided to just first read the first page -- and the next thing you know I was seven pages in. It was a page turner. I finished it in less than a day. This first person narrative of a fictional "train wreck girl" -- modeled after the real-life woman who later would be the downfall of John Edwards -- is fascinating in a sick, "made you look" kind of way. Surely that has some value, though I find it tough to put it into a literary context.
 A sad New York story September 5, 2008
love to read (San Marino, Ca. United States)
I ordered this book because it is based on the life of Rielle Hunter. I think the young women in this book were sad, depressed women who could find no meaning in life. The women were occupied with sex and drugs and being lazy about cleanliness. I do not recommend this book unless you want to read about down and dirty sex.
 Should Have Remained a Short Story August 29, 2008
Renee Thorpe (Karangasem, Bali)
Once upon a time, Jay McInerny wrote for Esquire a taut and quite perfect short story about a Manhatten party girl whose life was a mess of man trouble and drugs.
What ever made him stretch it into a novel? Like street cocaine, it was cut and diluted with unnecessary additives.
To be sure, it is a brilliant little slice of pre-cellphone socializing, pre Internet bubble stock brokering, with a dash of pre Giuliani New York grunge. The author had his finger on the pulse of a moment in time now vanished forever. It's like a time capsule for the end of the 80's and for that it can be enjoyed.
But the real beauty of this story was told best in its original form, the tale of a girl whose champion horse, Jim Diver, is a clue to her sorry state. An unforgettable story that seems jaded on the outset but ends up with a revelation so simple and mean, only a true humanist could have penned it.
is this the book based in part on Rielle Hunter? August 22, 2008
the constant reader (CA United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have not read this book, so I gave it a neutral review even though it's not the type of book I tend to read.
I read today, in a comment on NYT website, that the female character in this book was based on the very real person Rielle Hunter, who was recently revealed to have had an affair with John Edwards.
Is this true?
from
http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/starve-the-beast/index.html
Quote begins here:
#18.
August 22nd,
2008
5:45 am
The press and the pundits are tearing
John Edwards apart, but what about
Rielle Hunter, his supposed mistress?
This woman stalked Edwards, sensing he
was weak and wealthy. Jay McInerney lived with
her in the '80s, and used her as
a model for his book, " My Life Story."
Hunter is portrayed as a voracious cocaine snorting, sex addict. Edwards didn't stand a chance.
Hunter has a baby, at age 42. This was
a deliberate choice on her part. Hunter
was a sexual predator, who sensed weakness, and simply seduced Edwards with old fashioned sex. Edwards was a
fool to go on television and try to explain himself.
-- Posted by richard slimowitz
close Quote
http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/starve-the-beast/index.html
REAL LIFE CAN BE STRANGER THAN FICTION August 21, 2008
Enrique Hernandez (Miami, FL)
Alison Poole is a wannabe actress living in the fast lane. Her divorced, socialite parents are too busy jetsetting with nubile lovers to give Alison the time of day. Not made for work, she comes up with all sorts of creative ways of pumping cash and credit cards out of her seemingly limitless circle of Ivy League boyfriends. She and her rich, beautiful girlfriends (Paris Hilton was not the first party girl to go around declaring "I'm hot") snort more coke than Al Pacino in "Scarface." McInerney gives Alison a sardonic voice that is witty and authentic, like a postmodern Holden Caulfield (that is, if Holden were a boy-crazed nymphomaniac). The zany, coke-induced banter between Alison and her friends made me simultaneously laugh and cringe. At times, the characters reminded me of the Sally Fowler rat pack in Whit Stillman's movie, "Metropolitan," particularly the scene in which they play Truth or Dare with disastrous consequences.
Here's how Alison describes her sister: "Watch out! Rebecca's coming to town, and I'm definitely not talking about the one from Sunnybrook Farm. This is my maniac sister. She's flying in from Palm Beach with her latest squeeze...Becca uses things up quickly--cars, credit cards, men, drugs, horses, you name it. The men and the credit cards are sort of mixed up together....The best way I can think to describe Rebecca is to say she's like the Tasmanian Devil, that character in the Bugs Bunny cartoons that moves around inside a tornado and demolishes everything in his path. Or else she's like an entire heavy metal band on tour--all wrapped up in this cute little hundred-and-ten-pound package. What really worries me is the combination of Becca and Didi. When those two get together it's like--what were the two things you were never supposed to mix in chemistry class or you'd like blow up the whole school? You know what I mean. Not oil and water--something else." All around Alison, her family and friends are imploding, caught in a materialistic nightmare of their own making. Her own compulsive behavior leads to venereal diseases, drug overdoses, unwanted pregnancy, and abortion.
There's not much of a plot. The attraction is all in Alison's quirky voice, caustic humor, and sharp monologues/dialogues. What plot there is goes like this: Alison's latest fling, Skip Pendleton (probably the most arrogant yuppy in Manhanttan), gives her name out to all his friends, who begin calling her up for a good time. Although Alison is a good-time girl (her motto is "You can't rape the willing"), it irks her that Skip gave her name and number out like that. On the rebound, she meets Dean, with whom she begins to fall in love, or at least lust. But it turns out that Dean knows Skip (small world), and the relationship turns complicated. Most of the book deals with Alison and Dean's love life, as well as Alison's crazy circle of drug addicted girlfriends. Alison is lost in hedonism -- will she find her way out? Don't bet on it.
In one of those bizarre twists where real life gets stranger than fiction, the character Alison Poole is based on the woman who is now infamous for being presidential hopeful John Edwards' mistress (Rielle Hunter). I liked BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY and BRIGHTNESS FALLS, so I decided to give STORY OF MY LIFE a try, more for the author than the scandal. I'm glad I did; it's hilarious, although not a very deep book. It has lots of adult content, foreshadowing the scandal in vivid detail. Alison Poole also shows up in AMERICAN PSYCHO and GLAMORAMA, novels authored by McInerney's friend, Bret Easton Ellis. Clearly, they hung out around some of the same people.
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