Lush Life: A Novel by Richard Price
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Book Reviews of Lush Life: A Novel
Book Review: Richard Price is a True Craftsman
Summary: 5 Stars
Oftentimes my husband and I will read a book at the same time. We read about the same pace, so it makes for some interesting conversation in bed as we usually read for a couple hours before lights out. With this book he stopped a lot, saying, have you got to this part yet, can you believe how well Price writes, then he'd start reading and I'd close my eyes and listen to the vernacular of New York's lower east side roll off his lips. My hubby is a good reader, good with accents and, combined with Price's gift of dialogue, I think I got a lot more out of this book than if I'd been reading alone.
Richard Price is certainly the Raymond Chandler of our day. Well, Chandler combined with a bit of Hemingway and Elmore Leonard. He's a pleasure to read, though sometimes difficult. He's a true craftsman, who conjures up real people in a real world. A world a bit frightening at times, a bit sad at others.
His cops and their Quality of Life Task Force are certainly not the kind of "Protect and Serve" officers of the law I'd been brought up to respect, but then I must confess to being a bit sheltered. Mr. Price for sure knows the sights, sounds and smells of New York, cops, crime and the boys in the hood. He nails his characters, black and white, cop and victim, any and all. He does it with dialogue the way no other writer can. He puts you in the pants of his characters. When they're frustrated, you're frustrated. When they wanna scream, you do too. When they face away, when they cower, you're ashamed, not just for poor Eric, but maybe for yourself too, because you wonder if you'd do different.
Can you tell I really liked this book. I could go on forever, but I'm going to stop now, because I think I'm going to pick the book back up and start all over again.
Book Review: Not a thriller, but a smart, incisive piece of social drama
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the joys of reading Richard Price is his strong grip on characters and their world. Never the most interested in plots, Price instead uses crime and violence as a starting point, watching how his characters react and deal with their actions and the crimes of others. Lush Life, his latest, is no different, but in some ways, it's the best of the worlds he's created, if only because of how open he is with the reader. The "who" of the central crime isn't a mystery for very long; instead, Price lays all of his cards on the table, allowing readers to progress through the book as a drama. The result isn't for all tastes; I've read countless reviews on Amazon about how dull the book is. But from page one, I was gripped. No one writes dialogue and speech like Price, whose conversations would work just as well as radio drama as in a book. From the myriad traffic stops of the Quality of Life squad to the grueling interrogation scenes, from the confrontation between two friends whose relationship is changed over a gunfight to a self-serving memorial service, Price creates his world through observation and listening. As with Pelecanos, it's no wonder he ended up working on The Wire - his intelligence and willingness not to insult the reader fits that show perfectly, and the way that his characters are filled with shades of gray is fascinating. From the conflicted, self-loathing Eric Cash to the devastated father of a victim, Price creates a world so real that I hated for it to come to an end, a rare feeling that I get anymore from books. No, it may not be the thriller to end all thrillers, but as a incisive, smart piece of drama as much about our times as of them, Lush Life is a masterpiece with so much quiet power you may not even realize it until you sit back and take it all in.Book Review: I seldom give ANYTHING 5 stars - this book deserves all 5
Summary: 5 Stars
NO SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW!: I read a lot of non-fiction but occassionally get the urge to read a novel and picked this one rather impulsively. I'm not a regular reader of murder mysteries or similar type books. This novel "works" on many levels. First, the dialogue is very well written - each of the main characters has a distinctive speaking style and the author moved back and forth among them rather deftly (or did an excellent job in his re-write process after his first draft.) Second, the main and ancillary story lines come across as realistic. Third - despite the various story lines, I was eager to learn how the murder would be resolved - whether it would be solved, and if so, how. Fourth - the characters were well developed. Each of the characters brings his or her own baggage, just as we all do in real life, and without being overly psychologically dramatic the author shows us how each character's baggage influences his or her behavior. There aren't any simplistically drawn primary characters.
If you've seen any episodes of series"The Wire" you are familiar with Price's work and know that he understands the workings of low-income, high crime neighborhoods and the law enforcement officers who work there.
This is the best novel I have read in years, and I will absolutely read it again, more slowly. I rarely ever have any interest in re-reading books but with this one I very much want to do so to spend more time looking at word choices and descriptions to see how they affected the story for me.
Book Review: The apes that raised me were surprisingly intelligent
Summary: 5 Stars
Matty Clark, the big bucket-headed Irishman at the heart of Lush Life, is just exactly the type of guy I want to read about in a book. Past peradventure a palpable plethora of powerfully portrayed personalities populate the pages of Price's positively priceless prose poetry but what the hey where am I oh yes the library like wow poleaxingly potent panatela for fair a fat fugging fatty but yes ahem for me it's Matty Clark who stands out in this lively and colourful downtown crowd. Matty is a bleeding gem so he is. Plus the whodunnit aspect of Lush Life isn't half so engrossing as the demented particulars of people and place. Seriously now, what we have here is a vigorously entertaining slice of life on the Lower East Side. Compulsively readable writing and a compelling character study to boot. Funny too, Richard Price can crack you up six ways from Sunday. One of the little dudes from the projects has his swaggering gait described hilariously as hardcore penguin. The mantra of the four undercover sweatshirts from the Quality of Life Task Force: Dope, guns, overtime. That's just brilliant that is. I loved this book enough to read it three or four times already. Unashamedly puts the procedural back in police procedural. And the scene with Matty waiting for his nitwit son that closes the novel is emphatically worth waiting for too. The perfectly pitched parting shot. Even the image left by the very last line is a deep satisfaction.Book Review: sublime crime novel
Summary: 5 Stars
I love the double-entendre in this title. "Lush" can be taken to describe the classy restaurants and shops of the Upper East Side of NYC, or it can refer to the alcohol and drug abuse that is rampant. One reviewer noted that the mystery in the novel is resolved in the first third of the book. However, what the reviewer called "mystery" struck me as frustrating, so that I was relieved by its early resolution. The author seemed to be sowing the seeds of doubt for the reader, and I thought it made for a rather beguiling beginning actually. In any case, this is not a mystery novel or a thriller. It's a novel about solving a crime from a police detective's point of view. The cop is Matty Clark, and the other main character is Eric Cash, a restaurant manager who flees the scene when Ike, one of the guys he's out partying with, is shot on the street. Ike's father is so disoriented by the death of this son that he avoids his family and even tries to solve the murder himself. Matty finally begins to examine his own family issues, as his sons are not exactly model citizens. More exasperating, though, to Matty, is the lack of cooperation on the part of his supervisors. When it becomes clear that their mistakes have been a major hindrance to the totally botched investigation, Matty has to take the blame and overcome the consequences--persuading an indignant witness to provide more clues.