'The story of a disintegrating marriage set in New York in the frenzied few months leading up to the Wall Street crash of 1987. A sort of BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES with the added advantage of believable, likeable characters' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY Their moment was of the brief, shining sort when everything seemed possible. The gold rush of the 1980s, when the best and the brightest vied with the worst and most craven for riches, fame and the love of beautiful people. With all the force and cunning enterprise of Manhattan itself, BRIGHTNESS FALLS captures lives-in-the-making - men and women confronting their sudden middle-age with wit and low behaviour, fear and confusion, and occasionally even a little honesty and decency. None of them, ever, would be the same again