From People magazine Feb. 6, 2006

Reviewed by Lee Aitken

By and large, novels that revisit 9/11 do so to explore suffering and deep meaning. McInerney takes a more cynical approach, refracting the Twin Towers tragedy through the self-involvement of New York's striving classes. Thus, soon after the attack, Park Avenue hostesses scramble to connect with victims' groups so they can proceed with their own ballet benefits and cancer balls. The downtown bohos who had played one-upmanship with cookware and exotic vinegars now compete to deliver food at Ground Zero. But deeper emotions are set loose too, which find the fault lines in two marriages: Russell and Corinne are a hip literary couple gamely eduring the strain of raising children in a modest loft. Luke, a lapsed banker, is married to Sasha, a social swan who fails to notice that their Upper East Side milieu has given her daughter a bad case of "status poisoning." Luke and Corinne meet "on the pile" and start an affair, while ancillary plot lines come and go without any resolution. As always, McInerney does a good job of evoking Manhattan's privileged world through name dropping and knowing asides (Luke refuses to wear an Ozwald Boateng tux that makes him look "like and Oscar nominee advised by an over-zealous team of stylists.") The love affair subsides along with the adrenaline rush of the terror attack, and for this crowd, at least, going back to "real" life is a disspiriting return to the empty rituals of success.