Lush Life: A Novel by Richard Price Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Lush Life: A Novel
Book Review: Brilliant
Summary: 4 Stars
Price is a unique and brilliant writer. Lush Life is an excellent and original novel. Beautifully conceived and executed. It shows the complexity behind any incident in life...in this case, a mugging and murder. Thank you Richard Price for doing the difficult job of creating your art and writing this novel. Well Done!Book Review: Liked it!
Summary: 4 Stars
Paid money for the book. I don't regret my purchase. I liked it.That's all. Be well.Book Review: Slow police procedural
Summary: 3 Stars
Lush Life is about a robbery gone awry, the people involved/affected, and how police go about solving the crime. The story really drags because the author tries to give an all-encompassing view-how the lead detective goes about developing clues and tips, his relationship with his ex-wife and his 2 sons, his attraction to the victim's mother, etc. Then you have the victim's father, how he handles the tragic loss of his son, his relationship with his wife and daughter, his problem with drinking, etc. Then you have Eric Cash, one of the victims, and what he does afterwards, feels about what happened, why he acted the way he did, etc. It all makes for a realistic, but very dull read.Book Review: Newly Introduced to Richard Price - And I'm Impressed
Summary: 4 Stars
This is my first Richard Price novel. Not as good as I thought, but better than lots of books on the market.
Love his dialog, and his knowledge of the language of the city. He seems totally convincing to me. He knows these people.
Somewhat like a Dostoevsky novel, there's a crime at the center, but the book is about the ripples sent forth from the act.
Police are involved. Reluctant and enthusiastic witnesses. The shooter and his world of abuse. All are highlighted, stirred to some sense of self-worth, self-awareness by a rather random, casual crime.
The shooting means so little to the shooter until he and his friends see the stir it makes in the community. He writes hip-hop style poetry in his notebook that reveals his new sense of power. But the power in his poetry keeps meeting his random, fearful life.
He's the hero of his own made up story. But, he's dogged by the fact that the shooting was not a bold, brazen act, but a flinch, an act of cowardice. He keeps trying to live up to his new self-image without much success.
One of the most memorable scenes in the book shows him with his gun trained on the head of his sleeping step-father, while his mother looks on from another room. She slowly backs out of the room and simply goes to bed. She knows him.
The book loses its momentum when all the plots and subplots start flying about. But, at its core, a deeply engaging book about life lived in too-close proximity - to each other, and to death.
Book Review: Lush Life
Summary: 4 Stars
This book doesn't waste any time sucking you right into the life of the neighborhood it's describing, and most of the characters are sympathetic, but it often reads like someone had walked up and down the street capturing conversations and jotting them down for print. I'm not sure what I thought about Eric Cash and the book even makes excuses for his lack of motivation. The dialog throughout is good and the grief of the victims' family and friends seems real if overdone (at least to me). I thought the way the killer was compelled to confess was particularly nasty, since the detective interviewing him had been such a salt of the earth type throughout the book. I'd never read Richard Price before; this book was a revelation.