Customer Reviews

Lush Life

5 star:		(77)
4 star:		(70)
3 star:		(33)
2 star:		(31)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

Although I'm fairly familiar with Price through his film and television work, and have had "The Wanderers" sitting on my bookshelf for years, I've never read one of his novels until now. Set in a post 9/11, post Gulianni, rapidly gentrifying Lower East Side, the story revolves around a mugging turned murder, and how it affects everyone invovled. The framework is more or less that of a police procedural, where we meet the muggers and perps, see it all go down, meet the police who come along to pick up the peices, and then watch them all interact over the course of the following week.

Price is widely regarded as a master of dialogue, and a master of capturing how people walk it and talk it in the real world. And he certainly does that here, conveying almost everything important via dialogue, which is often heavily spiced with street slang or on the job jargon (which some readers may find offputting). Moreover s a fan of procedurals, I was hooked from the get go by Price's ability to set up the situation, show it go down, and then maintain the seperate threads. Indeed, for the first third of the book, I was completely engrossed.

However, after around 150 pages, he story loses momentum, and the final third of the book definitely drags. A large part of this has to do with the various perspectives Price keep shifting between, and his inability to trim away the fat. While it makes sense that we spend a good deal of time with lead detective Matty, who's trying to sort through conflicting statements and witness accounts, the story isn't helped by his semi-flirtation with the relative of the victim, and a subplot invovling his own stupid kids is really unnecessary. We also spend a lot of time with Eric Cash, whose role changes from victim to suspect to witness, and is traumatized by these events. That's all fine, but do we really need subplots about his sex-worker studying girlfriend in the Phillipines, or his abortive attempt to deal coke?

Of course, Price is trying to do more than write a crime procedural, and these subplots all feed into the broader themes he's trying to explore. These are pretty fundamental at their core: what happens to us/how do we feel when we realize that our lives aren't what we had planned, or that we've somehow failed ourselves. for example, Matty is a good cop but a failed father, Eric is a good maitre'd but a failed actor. This is all well and good, but Price doesn't handle these themes with nearly the same accumen as he does his dialogue and descriptive details. It's a good read, but it gets so swamped by extraneous characters and situation that I went from loving it to merely liking it by page 450 or so.

(The title for this review is from "Lush Life," by Billy Strayhorn.)

Don't pick up a copy of Richard Price's "Lush Life," unless you're ready to give up your weekend. It's compulsively readable, and it's that good. It's also pretty depressing, but depressing in that, "Oh, God, that's life," way.

"Lush Life," is a police procedural that takes place over a little more than a week in the gentrified Inferno of NYC's lower east side. We meet the gentry, the old-timers, the cops, and, of course, the criminals. Nobody's clean, everybody's skimming, everybody's on the make for one thing or another, one guy gets shot in a mugging gone bad, and hell breaks loose in hell.

"Lush Life," has a lot going for it. The characters seem right, and true; the mileu is nailed; most of the pieces seem to be absolutely right-on, though I had a problem with a New Orleans style memorial service that tipped over the top; and the dialogue is so good it could have been written by Satan himself. One character seems to be the moral hinge of the novel - the father of the young man killed in the mugging. He's both pathetic, and a wraith, and he falls apart and comes back together more than once as he reaches for meaning and redemption.

Is there meaning, is there redemption? Check out the last stanza of Billy Strayhorn's incredible lyrics to the Duke Ellington tune, Lush Life:

"Romance is mush/stifling those who strive/so I'll live a lush life in some small dive/And there I'll be/While I rot with the rest/of those whose lives are lonely too..."

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.

It is my belief that when you watch a movie, the best acting comes when you don't notice that the person is acting; you become absorbed in the film and forget that the actor is merely playing a part. Similarly, often the best fiction writing is when you don't really notice the writing; if the narrative is too cleverly written, you might admire the cleverness, but it breaks the spell of being in that fictional world. Which brings me to Richard Price, and more particularly his new novel, Lush Life: it is sometimes a little too stylish for its own good.

The plot of Lush Life centers on an apparent mugging gone wrong. Eric Cash, Ike Marcus and Steve Boulware are walking around late one evening when a pair of wannabe crooks try to rob them. Ike is a little too defiant and gets shot. Steve is out cold, dead drunk and a series of events lead the police to believe Eric is the killer. It is sorted out relatively quickly, but not soon enough to for Eric to avoid a tough interrogation and a few hours in jail.

Lush Life is a crime story, but not the typical sort. It focuses less on the hunt for a murderer and more on the repercussions on all involved. For Eric, the brief arrest is merely the culmination of a very bad evening and the trauma - including dealing with his own cowardice during the mugging - will lead him on a self-destructive path. Similarly, Ike's father, Billy, is unable to cope with the loss of his son. The third principal character, Detective Matty Clark, tries to find the real killer despite an unwillingness by the police brass to really pursue the case (after the embarrassment of Eric's wrongful arrest, they'd like the whole thing to go away). Matty also has to deal with the increasingly unhinged Billy while confronting the effects of his own poor parenting techniques.

There's a lot that's good about Lush Life. There are times when it is compelling reading, and Price often has a good sense of dialogue. On the other hand, there were times when his gritty, streetwise style is a little over-the-top and is distracting; in short, I noticed he was writing rather than just being drawn into his story. Overall, this merits a high three stars; it is a decent book, but there are better ones out there.

For me, it was the characters that made "Lush Life", not just the dialogue, and Price seems to be able to make a name into a person with just a few words. I liked this book because it was a police procedural in which the victims, witnesses and perpetrators of the crime around which it centers were each treated fairly by the author. I was interested in all of them.

Price really has the "show, don't tell" thing down. He's never preachy or morbid, like some crime-fiction authors, but doesn't shy away from the tension created by a neighborhood that is a gentrifying ex-ghetto cozying up to the modern-day projects. At the beginning of the book, the author makes the reader feel satisfyingly involved in the intense questioning of murder suspect Eric Cash by detectives Matty Clark and Yolanda Bello, but by the time it is revealed that Cash didn't do it, the reader feels as sleazy and as sorry as the interrogators do for how they leaned on him. Cash is a weak person -- and Clark and Bello are flawed, too -- but they are all very human. So are the neighborhood lawyers, reporters, crazies and thugs, and the young shooter himself.

Price unflinchingly calls the racism, classism and PD bureaucracy as he sees them, but injects enough humor into the book that reading it is a sweet experience, not a sour one. "Lush Life"'s main draw isn't the plot, which is fairly standard. The best thing about the novel is the people who inhabit Price's Lower East Side, good, bad and indifferent.

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.

Richard Price stands among that unusual collection of period writers whose period is right now; its one that his style matches beautifully. As with his previous works, Price writes with an energy that often bounces from frenetic to manic, high octane sentences most often delivered in the form of dialogue. Indeed, Lush Life again demonstrates why many young writers look to Price's example in their efforts to master dialogue. Huge amounts of information, both of characters, plot, and context arrive in the form of rapid fire verbal banter, creating a sort of amphetamine driven tale. To be clear, that is not meant to imply, Price is not a careful writer - far from it - this instead is a highly intentional effect. That said, this style leads to a novel that will not suit every readers taste; while enjoying Lush Life, I often found its better than 400 pages exhausting.

Readers with a taste for Price, however, will surely be impressed. Lush Life offers a view of New York both compelling and familiar, in language often raw and fierce, and always with a generous dollop of humor. For those long curious in Price but who have not yet read his work, this offers a fine place to start, and if it is not for every reader -- and to be honest he is not always for me -- all should be able to appreciate his gift.

In all fairness, I am an ex born and bred Bronx girl. I lived in lower Manhattan in the 70s when it was Funksville...and safe because the mafia still contolled the streets. I never ventured into the lower east side on the other side of Bowery as it was too scary.

Richard Price is an amazing writer. He has the ability to get into a character's head. His writing is compassionate to all sides of the story. His grit is about real life tragedy in novel form. This book is his best yet. I have been reading it non-stop throughout the weekend. Just as he did in his writing for The Wire, he approaches all sides of reality. Unlike when I lived on Elizabeth St., this part of NYC is now ultra-pseudo-hip. With gentrification comes those who watch, disenfranchised in their own neighborhood. The neighborhood becomes their "bank." Price weaves a tale with characters from all the various characters of this lower east side neighborhood. Not surprisingly, it contains echoes of Nicole duFresne's murder in that neighborhood. Outsiders who move in who just don't know how to react to those with harmful intent as they probably never lived in such a melting pot of race and monetary disparity. She said "what are you gonna do? Shoot us?" and got shot dead when all the muggers wanted was their wallets. Ike says, "Not tonight, my man" and he too ends up dead. As Price puts it, suicide by mouth. This books really shows the the disparity between people occupying the same neighborhood. Most of the action is confined to this neighborhood, which includes cops, corner boys, white youngsters trying to be hip, older hipsters who were once young, pioneers who lived in this pre-cool-funky neighborhood, Israelis, Arabs, Latinos and Asians. I love Price's writing as he painstakingly details a short period of time as it unfolds in this murder investigation. He hits the marrow of the bone with his characterization and I hinge on every word as a Price book release is an infrequent cause for celebration. What can I say. I love everything he writes. If you loved The Wire, you will love this. He captures a moment in the ever changing face of downtown Manhattan. BRAVO RICHARD PRICE.

Lush life is a delicious thriller that once you satrt is hard to put down

Lush Life is a great read, really enjoyable, compelling reading. I'm surprised to see it referred to as a police procedural--that genre is pretty limited. Calling Lush Life a police procedural is tantamount to calling Pride and Prejudice chick lit. While Lush Life has some elements in a police procedural--there is a dead body and police are involved--Lush Life goes beyond the typical police procedural example. Why is this one so terrific? Outstanding dialogue, complex, flawed characters with complicated motivations, entertaining forays into personal lives, humor and wit. Enjoy!