Lush Life: A Novel
by Richard Price
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard PriceEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2008-03-04
ISBN: 0374299250
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Book Reviews of Lush Life: A Novel
Book Review: "Two eyewits trump no evidence."
Summary: 4 Stars
As Eric Cash and Ike Marcus are walking Ike's drunk friend, Steve Boulware, home from an all-nighter in New York City, they are confronted by two "dark" males, intent upon robbery. Eric immediately "gives it up," but Ike quietly approaches the robbers, saying "Not tonight, my man." Within seconds, he is dead, shot in the chest. Accounts of the robbery and murder differ among the witnesses, and the police, led by Det. Matty Clark, a long-time Irish cop, take Eric, a victim, into custody on suspicion, interrogating him and turning him into a permanent enemy.
New York's Lower East Side, where the action takes place, is changing. Bohemian students wanting to be poets and writers, like Eric and Ike, have moved in. Many long-time immigrant populations have moved out, and the neighborhood is racially and culturally mixed. Almost anything seems to go, socially, and drugs are an active part of the scene. Looming over the area are the Lemlichs, a series of project houses in which the residents do whatever they can to survive, often ganging up against a hostile outside world and resorting to drug sales for income and escape.
Det. Matty Clark, running the investigation, is stymied by the lack of evidence and witnesses, the reluctance of the neighborhood to talk, and the desire of his own department to close the case as soon as possible--without involving the press. Ike's father, Billy Marcus, numbed by the news of his son's murder, is reliving his life with Ike, alternately blaming himself, the police, and Ike's companions for Ike's death. Eric Cash, wanting to escape the horrors of the murder, is hoping to move elsewhere, the fruitlessness of his life as a writer finally recognized.
Famous for his ability to tell a story in the dialogue of street slang, author Richard Price creates a panorama of life in the city so vivid that it feels like an unpleasant movie unreeling behind one's eyes. The dialogue and the images it inspires are realistic, gritty, and often full of heartache, as characters grow before our eyes. Their interactions become the clashes and miseries we experience in nightmares. As Price explores various points of view, he also shows the randomness of the characters' interconnections and the power of the city itself to alter dreams and the future.
As Price explores his characters and their behavior, he sometimes veers off into subplots which delay the story without adding significant new information. Matty Clark's problems with his sons, his brief flirtation with Billy Marcus's distraught wife, and a long section in which Steve Boulware conducts Ike's memorial service could have been shortened significantly, while still retaining thematic integrity. Price's vision is huge, and his ability to show the widening circles by which one event can draw in large numbers of unsuspecting characters is successful, however, despite the novel's excesses. Mary Whipple
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