Model Behavior Audiobook By Jay McInerney cover art

Model Behavior

A Novel

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Model Behavior

By: Jay McInerney
Narrated by: Richard Cox
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Connor McKnight, former acolyte of film, Zen, and Japanese literature, is not unaware that these avocations are wildly different from his present occupation (fledgling celebrity journalist). Meanwhile, his longtime girlfriend, the fashion model Philomena, seems curiously remote, and soon decamps for the West Coast.

Then there's the sister with whom he shared a flamboyantly addled childhood, who now matches her brilliance for theoretical abstraction with a compassion for world suffering, imperiling her own well-being.

These and other anxieties can scarcely be assuaged by his trio of flirting obsessions - a gorgeous stripper, a screenplay in progress, and the nature of a meaningful future - or by his principal ally and best friend, a monkishly neurotic and militantly vegetarian writer.

With the holidays fast approaching, and a female admirer stalking him by email, Connor gropes his hapless, hilarious way toward not so much salvation as self-preservation.

©2000 Jay McInerney (P)2009 Phoenix Anthologies & Short Stories Fiction Genre Fiction Short Stories Urban Witty Funny

Critic reviews

"What makes McInerney so likable is the ingenuousness behind his cynicism. Even as he so wittily mocks the absurdity of the glamour industry, he is still enamored of the dreams it sells." (Booklist)

"Swift and amusing. . . . An astute social observer of the cruelties of modern New York, [McInerney] is also capable of great tenderness." (The Boston Globe)

"Very funny, and full of the rakish, old-fashioned literary elegance that McInerney always manages to mix into the slangy idioms of his characters." (The New York Review of Books)
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I like McInerney so much that I sometimes pick up some long-ago read novels and just start reading for the pleasure of being with the characters and places again. But, after more than an hour I can't get interested in the protagonist, or his friends, or his girlfriend or their presumably looming conflicts.

It could be that the narrator's slowness and his louche cynicism is a big part of the problem. I might enjoy this more in print. THANK YOU Audible, for your return policy!

Disappointed McInerney fan

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