Lush Life: A Novel by Richard Price
|
List Price: Our Price: $0.01 You Save: $14.99 (100%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Lush Life: A Novel
Book Review: Portrait of the Lower East Side
Summary: 3 Stars
I used to live in the East Village, three blocks from Houston, and Lush Life brought back a lot of memories of the Lower East Side - at least the privileged white part that I remember. Price roams much further than I or my friends ever did, and the imagined lives and voices of the police, Chinese immigrants, and kids from the projects are fascinating.
As other reviewers point out, the plot is very thin, and if you are looking for a procedural you'll be disappointed. This is a set of character studies, and the most interesting is the LES itself.
Book Review: A good abstraction , but no bone-rattling plot.
Summary: 3 Stars
That's the way I would describe this baby. If you're into atmospheric novels and don't mind the absence of plot ( Claire Messud fans out there?) , then you'll like this. Lush life is about a mood; a New York moment captured; crumbling and cast to the side in a few years for a new kind of the same. Gritty and smooth at the same time, it is an exercise in abstract crime writing. The equivalent of modern art for me; something you cock your head at and say " I don't think I know what this is really, but I kinda like it."Book Review: lush life
Summary: 3 Stars
Pictures street life in a Lower East Side going downhill. Interesting interludes of cops and those they pursue. No longer resembles the Lower East Side of New York of yesteryear,the East Side of hippies, pushcarts, Yiddish theater. Sometimes the hip language doesn't translate to the the non-hip reader. Not in the league with Dickens or Dreiser as claimed by one reviewer.Book Review: A detective story without much intrigue
Summary: 2 Stars
Somehow I had the wrong idea about this book. I thought it was more contemporary literature offering interesting character studies and perspectives on urban life. In fact, it is really just a detective story without any intriguing questions about what happened or what will happen (most of the book is based on the perspective of one detective, Matty Clark, and you learn all the details of the featured crime up front--for some reason I had the impression from the blurbs that it was more about people in the community, not primarily the police). The story is gussied up quite a bit with elaborate details, but those details seemed to me like a familiar relaying of stereotypes about New York. The type of perspective on New York that subtly criticizes the city as a way of glorfying it, reinforcing NYC narcissism by highlighting it and trying to make it seem really interesting.
So I'll admit that my low rating of this book is partially because I felt misled as to what it was about. That was probably my fault for not looking into it more carefully. I'd also note that the book was reasonably readable considering that there was nothing about the story to really figure out. Richard Price is an author that comes up a lot in contemporary culture, and I am glad to get more familiar with his writing so I have it as a point of reference. The book was not terrible, just mostly forgettable.
Book Review: like a balloon
Summary: 2 Stars
...full of color on the outside, full of air on the inside. The story of a crime in a gentrifying neighborhood. A young waiter with writerly aspirations is gunned down during a robbery as a result of mouthing off to a young thug with a gun. The detective in charge of the case - a less than perfect character - becomes determined to find the killer. In the end, the police does, as a result of a confession from an arrested guy. The story sounds simple, but that would an insult to simple. It is actually simplistic, with a crime that is solved prosaically, and action that stays at the level of words. This is CRIME, in a literary sense, with a lot of ink spent to create ATMOSPHERE, to DEPICT life in a way that impresses the review section of the New York Times. I guess the author was afraid that making the action thrilling would cross the line into airport thrillers, whereas he wants to be an AUTHOR. It says that Price worked for the TV show, "The Wire." I liked that show, especially seasons 1 and 2, but be forewarned: an episode of that is far more satisfying and enjoyable than anything here. I did like reading this book, but it was in the expectation that the story would develop in interesting ways, that there would be well-plotted action, an interesting twist. It didn't, so I feel I was taken for a ride.