★★★☆☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
New York City may be the greatest city on earth, but it’s sure tough on marriages. That seems to be the theme that runs through The Good Life, book two of the Calloway saga. The Calloways are now in their forties, raising twins, and still struggling to keep up with the frenzied and moneyed lifestyle of Manhattan.
The novel is set just before and a few months after September 11, 2001. That terrorists could so dramatically disrupt New York, and could do so again at any moment, serves as a midlife crisis accelerator for Corinne and Luke, who meet as volunteers at Ground Zero. They form a special, once-in-a-lifetime bond and must balance their own desires with the needs of their families in a war-torn city.
I loved Brightness Falls, the predecessor to this one, which wrestled with such big themes that I felt it was one of the very best American novels of the past century. This one, with its modest scope and almost cliched theme, was merely good.Â