Lush Life: A Novel by Richard Price Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Lush Life: A Novel
Book Review: Good Sense of Style and Dialogue
Summary: 4 Stars
Richard Price paints a gritty realistic picture of New York in his latest book LUSH LIFE. It is an absorbing book about less than perfect characters who nevertheless come alive through sparkling (if sometimes coarse) dialogue.
His sense of place and time creates a fine image of the city. It is a snapshot that will provide future readers with a sense of the early 21st century just as other authors have offered similar pictures of earlier times.
The pace is fast and entertaining. Some may not like the characterizations, but they are fascinating.
Book Review: Vibrant, compelling read
Summary: 5 Stars
Lush Life takes an uncompromising look at a supposedly revitalized New York City, exposing the junkie beneath the expensively tailored suit that Rudy Giuliani likes to claim he single-handedly rehabilitated during his two controversial terms as Mayor. Richard Price is too good a writer to opt for the easy polemic, though, instead presenting a morally ambigious cast of characters as compelling as the City itself, their personal dramas playing out against the backdrop of the investigation of a murder on the Lower East Side, and the so-called "Quality of Life" initiatives that arguably created a police state for all but the most privileged, enabling the quickest path to gentrification of impoverished but trendy neighborhoods.
Lush Life is part love letter to, part indictment of New York City, written with a journalist's eye for detail and an activist's sense of passion, and Price's rapid-fire precision style, full of fabulous run-on sentences and quick-cut transitions that perfectly evoke the breathless energy of life in New York, makes it tempting to read straight-through in one long sitting, but even better to savor over the course of a week, on the subway, at a coffee shop, finishing up in a comfortable chair at home where the various endings will resonate the strongest.
A stellar effort that's more than worthy of the advance praise it's received, and as good an example of New York City literature as I've read in ages.
Book Review: I Tried
Summary: 2 Stars
I tried. I really tried. I was looking forward to reading Lush Life, if nothing else because it's set in the Lower East Side, a place that I love and where I used to live. I started reading it, put it down, picked it up again, put it down--again and again, probably about a hundred times. The dialogue is well-written and sounds very real (the reason I'm giving this novel two stars) but no matter how much I tried, I simply couldn't get into this book.
Book Review: Wired
Summary: 5 Stars
Arising from the fallout from a supid, random act of violence, this book bears similarities to HBO's THE WIRE, as well as to Tom Wolfe's BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, more to the former than the latter. No surprise, since Price is a contributor to that unsurpassed series. The dialogue flows like a script. The characters are uniformly intriguing. As in THE WIRE, all participants in the drama are clearly portrayed -- perpetrators, cops, family of victim -- a total 360 degree portrait of a neighborhood, and by extension, a City, and further, the Country, exemplified.Book Review: Did not finish it
Summary: 3 Stars
Richard Price films (Clockers) and TV Shows (The Wire) attracted me to this novel, but nothing about it grabbed me and made me finish it. Having it on my nightstand reminds me of the laborious semester in college when I took "Forgotten Feminist Voices of the 19th Century" and dreaded opening my books each night.
My biggest complaint is the speed, which drags along because of the agonizing attention to detail. While reading it, I would find myself doing a page audit, saying "these five pages could be trimmed to one".
As others have pointed out, the author has a knack for presenting the gritty dialogue of the streets. But the same can be said for dozens of other authors and screenwriters. Reading this book for only that reason would be like going to a restaurant because they have nice napkins.