Lush Life: A Novel by Richard Price Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $2.17 You Save: $23.83 (92%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Lush Life: A Novel
Book Review: "Everyone's got something to lose."
Summary: 4 Stars
Book Review: "I'm From New York City"
Summary: 5 Stars
Book Review: "Not tonight, my man."
Summary: 5 Stars
"Lush Life" is my first audio book of 2009 and I doubt that I will find a better combination of author and reader the rest of the year. Richard Price is a master of dialogue regardless of the class or color of his characters and Bobby Cannavale, the television and movie actor giving life to the characters here, handles them all with ease.
Rather surprisingly, despite the length and heft of "Lush Life," its plot centers around a simple armed robbery that goes bad because of two of the people involved, one of them a victim, and the other, one of the robbers. Two people, each totally unprepared for what is happening to them at that moment, are suddenly eyeball-to-eyeball and, to the surprise of both of them, one is shot dead.
Ike Marcus, a young white guy out on the town with two friends, refuses to accept the fact that two black teens expect him to hand over his valuables despite the pistol one of them is aiming at him. After he mutters what would be his last words, "Not tonight, my man," he is struck by a single bullet and falls to the ground mortally wounded. On the other side of that pistol stands Tristan Acevedo, a young man holding a gun for the first time in his life and who is stunned to realize that he has reflexively pulled its trigger after Ike Marcus foolishly stepped toward him.
"Lush Life" is not a whodunit. There is never any doubt as to the murderer's identity or motive. Instead, Price takes a frank look at everyone involved in, or affected by, the crime: the three robbery victims, the two robbers, family and friends of all of them, the police charged with figuring it all out, and the people who live in the neighborhood where it all happens.
The book is largely conversational, perfect for an audio presentation, and the way that Price allows his characters to express themselves makes them seem very real. We get into the heads of those black kids living on the project streets, kids so caught up in the drug culture that they are oblivious to any other possibilities. We suffer along with Ike's father, an articulate man driven by confusion and despair to hang out near the crime scene in hopes that he will overhear someone bragging about the murder. We admire Matty Clark, a good detective and a decent man, who takes a personal interest in Ike's family and risks his own career by fighting to keep the investigation as active as possible. We sympathize with Eric Cash, another of the robbery victims, who has his life almost destroyed by what happens to him after the crime. We sneer at the way the robbery's third victim uses his fifteen minutes of fame to advance his show business career.
Even more amazingly, we come to know dozens of people around the core of main characters, each of them adding bits of color and detail to the world so clearly illustrated in "Lush Life." I seldom suggest that readers opt for the audio version of a book over its written one, but I am doing it this time.
"Lush Life" is a very good book, one you have to hear to really appreciate at its most powerful.
Book Review: "The City of New York Was Not Finished With Him"
Summary: 4 Stars
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. 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--despite the novel's excesses. n Mary Whipple
Clockers: A Novel
Samaritan (GMA June Pick)
Color of Money, Sea of Love, Night and the City: Three Screenplays