Lush Life: A Novel by Richard Price
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Book Reviews of Lush Life: A Novel
Book Review: A Symphony In Words!
Summary: 5 Stars
Lush Life, the latest book from Richard Price, is, as the jacket describes, essentially a story of two Lower East Sides in New York City: one a high priced bohemia, the other a home to hardship, its residents pushed to the edges of their time-honored turf. The plot in Lush Life is a simple one: At about four hours into the start of a new day in 2008, three young men mildly acquainted with each other are walking down the street together when a street kid from the "other" Lower East Side stepped up to them and pulled a gun. Within seconds of this encounter, one of the young men is killed and the lives of the other two men are irreparably altered. While this may sound like a mystery that will be filled with suspense and excitement and a variety of twists and turns, be aware that Lush Life has none of these qualities. So, if these qualities are what you want, do not even bother to pick up this book. However, do yourself a large favor and put Lush Life at the top of your reading list when you want to read a book that: (1) is filled with extremely well-developed, complex, real-world characters, and (2) masterfully captures the sounds, sights and smells of the world within New York's two Lower East Sides in such a way that you feel you are right there alongside the victims, the perpetrators and the police detectives investigating the murder as the plot unfolds. Lush Life is not a fast-reading book but it is definitely a book that will "stay with you" for a long time after finishing it. If you've read and enjoyed Price's Clockers or Freedomland or Samaritan, or if you were a fan of the HBO series, The Wire (for which Price was a co-writer), you'll know just what kind of excellent experience you're in store for when you become part of the world Price creates in Lush Life.Book Review: Not easy to set aside
Summary: 5 Stars
When I hear "police procedural", I think "mystery". This book is suspenseful but it is not truly a mystery, at least not in the way we usually mean. The puzzles in this book are those that most readers want in all good books, the ones that keep the pages turning. I wanted to know what the book's characters would say and do. I wanted to know who would come to a bad end and who would fare well. For me, the suspense was in these questions rather than who committed what crime. Besides, there were plenty of culpable people around.
The main characters in the novel are the accused, the detective who lands the case, the father of the slain. There are parallels in each of these, though more easily seen in the detective and the father of the dead son. Each grapples with his failure as a father. The accused deals with a different type of failure. All come across as searching for answers to the meaning of their lives. I cared about each one.
Other characters include a scrappy female detective from the projects; a group of young thugs whose fates do not seem in question; and, the step-mother of the victim. The book is populated with characters who have less stage time but who are essential to the book's complexity. Price finely draws all of them.
I will keep this book as one to study for its dialogue. Dialogue made it a pleasure to read; however, other than this and the book's characters, I liked its subtle mounting dread. A minor flaw was that it felt too long by about 100 pages. Even so, that did not slow me down. I looked forward to picking back up this story about Matty, Eric, and Ike Marcus's father whenever I had to put down the book.
Book Review: Fast-Paced Novel of the Contemporary Big City
Summary: 5 Stars
Richard Price, author of "Freedomland" and a scriptwriter for "The Wire," writes about New York City. His novels are fast-paced, gritty and real. The dialogue is slangy and real, but this does not exclude the reader so much as take him or her on a headlong, cinematic ride through the big city streets and poor, police and criminal cultures about which Price writes.
"Lush Life" is about a murder that brings together lifestyles and social classes: the poor kids from the lower East-Side projects, artists and hangers-on of the gentrified lower East-Side, middle-class parents who try to keep control of their children and thereby come up against people and social changes that they don't understand, and the blue-collar police detectives and street officers who keep the peace and, when that fails, try to obtain justice for victim and perpetrator alike. The middle-class parents of a shooting victim and families of his killers all wanted their kids to have a good life, and the tragic intersection of these two cultures points up the economic and social disparities in our society and demonstrates that all suffer as the result of such inequities. Love is hard to find in a world in which all scramble to survive and opportunities for connection are fleeting. Empathy is merely a police interrogation method in a City in which dreams bloom and fail in an atmosphere of greed and oppotunism.
Price makes his points without didacticism and bombast; this novel is a compelling read that instructs subtlely while delighting (even if grimly) mightily.
Book Review: More here than the great dialogue
Summary: 5 Stars
For me, it was the characters that made "Lush Life", not just the dialogue, and Price seems to be able to make a name into a person with just a few words. I liked this book because it was a police procedural in which the victims, witnesses and perpetrators of the crime around which it centers were each treated fairly by the author. I was interested in all of them.
Price really has the "show, don't tell" thing down. He's never preachy or morbid, like some crime-fiction authors, but doesn't shy away from the tension created by a neighborhood that is a gentrifying ex-ghetto cozying up to the modern-day projects. At the beginning of the book, the author makes the reader feel satisfyingly involved in the intense questioning of murder suspect Eric Cash by detectives Matty Clark and Yolanda Bello, but by the time it is revealed that Cash didn't do it, the reader feels as sleazy and as sorry as the interrogators do for how they leaned on him. Cash is a weak person -- and Clark and Bello are flawed, too -- but they are all very human. So are the neighborhood lawyers, reporters, crazies and thugs, and the young shooter himself.
Price unflinchingly calls the racism, classism and PD bureaucracy as he sees them, but injects enough humor into the book that reading it is a sweet experience, not a sour one. "Lush Life"'s main draw isn't the plot, which is fairly standard. The best thing about the novel is the people who inhabit Price's Lower East Side, good, bad and indifferent.
Book Review: Cynical, Amusing, and Masterful
Summary: 5 Stars
I was quite displeased when I finished LUSH LIFE. Not because the novel was anything less than vastly impressive, but because I accidentally left it on the airplane I was reading it on! So much for my dog-eared pages referring me to particularly sterling examples of Price's memorable and witty dialogue.
A recent NEW YORKER article points out that (like Elmore Leonard), Price's ballyhooed skills in writing dialogue may overshadow his other writerly resources. But while LUSH LIFE does an engrossing and masterful job of revealing the curious archaeology of the Lower East Side, its plot is... a red herring. And not only is the storyline frustrating, the book prominently features the most exasperating fictional character I can remember meeting. (Namely, Billy, the father who messily grieves for his murdered son.)
And that leaves us with a large cast of characters (project kids, aspiring actors, lifers on the police force) talking and talking to each other. And what talk it is! Regarding the unexpected urban patois that he employs, Price revealed to interviewer Terri Gross that he simply makes up much of his slang. That way, he doesn't have to worry about getting dated. And Price is so good at it, his police procedural transcends genre conventions and becomes something uniquely his own.
Also recommended: The Wire - The Complete First Season