Lush Life: A Novel by Richard Price Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Lush Life: A Novel
Book Review: Price's Best ?
Summary: 5 Stars
I picked up Lush Life prepared to like it, because I don't know of a better writer today with an eye for detail and an ear for detail. Those two senses make for a powerful combination when it comes to writing, as long as you have the discipline. And, for all of its 400-plus pages, Price shows he is up to the task. The writing never sags. In flashes, he shows that he could create such a creamy style that you might keel over from too many calories. In most of the book, you get the feeling that Price has set his characters in motion and just watches them act based on their essence. The narrative follows no typical arc for mystery fiction or suspense -- even though the centerpiece is a murder and how the city reacts around the violence. It might help to know New York's lower east side, but that's no requirement; I live out west. This is about humanity bouncing off each other, living with each other, setting standards for behavior as individuals and collectively, in small informal groups and in large organized ones. In the end, one line stays with me, and it surfaces in a brilliant spot: "Do you survive because of what is in you? Or because of what isn't..." Put this up there with Freedomland and Clockers, but don't overlook The Wanderers, Samaritan, and Bloodbrothers. Book Review: "The City of New York Was Not Finished With Him"
Summary: 4 Stars
Richard Price's now-bestselling Lush Life is not as much about a specific crime as it is about New York and the inhabitants of its Lower East side: cops, bartenders, wannabe actors and screenwriters, immigrants, rich kids, broken families, drug addicts, thugs, grocery store owners, the abused, and the abusers, all of them desperate. The murder of Ike Marcus is only a flashpoint. The people that the act brings to the surface define the novel through their individual stories.
Detectives Matty and Yolanda are charged with solving Ike's murder despite the inexplicable reluctance of their superiors to support the effort. Billy Marcus, Ike's father, attracts Matty's sympathy, both as a victim and as a representative of fatherhood, a role that continues to baffle Matty as he tries to deal with his wayward sons. Eric Cash, a bartender who was with Ike when he was shot, follows a downward spiral in the wake of the murder. The shooter, a formerly good kid living in low-income housing, struggles to find some control in an otherwise helpless, and hopeless, situation. Even the more minor characters have burdens that overtake their dreams.
This ambitious novel suffers at times from meandering subplots, some of which seem completely superfluous, not even adding to the larger portrait of life downtown; however, where the structure is more focused, Price shines. Stylistically, Lush Life makes demands on its readers through its sometimes unconventional prose and multiple points-of-view that skip from character to character, subplot to subplot. The result is a memorable, though fractured, portrait of the seedy side of New York.
I recommend this complex novel for Richard Price fans, readers of literary fiction, and those who want more than the usual summer fare. Skip this if you want a suspenseful, quick-read crime novel.
Book Review: What was so great?
Summary: 3 Stars
I thought it was very good at plunking you down in this particular group of settings -- different neighborhoods in NYCity. Richard Price is good at characterization. Very good at dialog. It's set in NYCity so I love that. I"m not recommending though ... the ending is a bit of a let down -- I mean the ending not the climax. I'm not sure why I say that because in many ways the ending was satisfying. In a novel, d?nouement is tricky ... it's a very tricky part of the book. Here's another thing: I didn't like any of the characters. That bothers me when I read.
Is it a sign of true maturity when you can really like a book even though you don't like any of the characters? Dunno. I think it's a sign of maturity when you can recognize that a writer is really good at writing even though you dislike the characters. For example, I thought the plotting and writing in Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter was really good. Really good. But I intensely disliked everyone. And, ultimately, that means I would only recommend the book with reservations. Maybe I'm being unfair ... because what if that was Porter's intention all along ... to portray these characters so that we wouldn't like them? Back to Lush Life: I'm not recommending it because the farther away from reading the book I am, I like it less and less and say to myself: yeah, so what was so great? There was something significant that was missing for me.
Book Review: Lush Life is hard to understand
Summary: 2 Stars
I guess I live too far from the streets of New York, but I found myself really struggling to understand what half of the dialog meant in this novel. I enjoyed the pace and the different views of the same event, but every time someone spoke I had to guess what they were saying. Made it hard to really enjoy.Book Review: Gritty
Summary: 4 Stars
Get ready to take a tour of the underbelly of the City in this work. Gritty, shocking, at times touching, this book will keep you hooked until the last page.