Lush Life: A Novel
by Richard Price
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Book Reviews of Lush Life: A Novel
Book Review: Great dialog, plot bogs down
Summary: 4 Stars
"Lush Life" appears on many lists as a must-read novel, praised for its vibrant dialog and gutsy, no-holds-barred punch. I appreciated it for that earthy quality. Author Price (who also co-wrote the HBO mini-series "The Wire," is incredibly good at getting the cadence of dialogue right. He's like David Mamet in understanding the back and forth, ebb and flow of "huhs" and shrugs, profanity and "dunnos" --all things that minor novelists just can't translate to the page. It's not like Elmore Leonard, who is brighter with the patter. This is deeper material, hinting at a thought process that the reader must delve into.
The plot is serviceable enough. It involves a bunch of losers going nowhere (including the cops) and one bright guy, Ike Marcus, who is definitely on his way up and out of New York's Lower East Side. However, a bungled robbery intrudes. A gun goes off, and it's Ike who dies. The rest of the book involves the agonizingly slow attempts to close the case when no one wants to talk, the police top brass show themselves to be idiots, the grieving parents are leeches, and the two other survivors really don't know what they saw.
Had Price sustained the suspense for just long enough and wrapped the book up at a satisfying point, I'd give this book five stars. Instead, he begins to meander through the psyches of all the characters. Believe me, there's not that much in their heads to view. All of them are hopeless and a protracted look at their hopelessness is not only depressing, it makes boring reading. When Price finally wraps up the case, he insists on delving into an unnecessary denouement to tie up loose ends, giving the the end a rootless, floating feeling.
This is a masterwork for anyone working on dialog. There is some brilliant stuff here. But it is far and away from the masterpiece that I was led to expect.
Book Review: Richard Price is a True Craftsman
Summary: 5 Stars
Oftentimes my husband and I will read a book at the same time. We read about the same pace, so it makes for some interesting conversation in bed as we usually read for a couple hours before lights out. With this book he stopped a lot, saying, have you got to this part yet, can you believe how well Price writes, then he'd start reading and I'd close my eyes and listen to the vernacular of New York's lower east side roll off his lips. My hubby is a good reader, good with accents and, combined with Price's gift of dialogue, I think I got a lot more out of this book than if I'd been reading alone.
Richard Price is certainly the Raymond Chandler of our day. Well, Chandler combined with a bit of Hemingway and Elmore Leonard. He's a pleasure to read, though sometimes difficult. He's a true craftsman, who conjures up real people in a real world. A world a bit frightening at times, a bit sad at others.
His cops and their Quality of Life Task Force are certainly not the kind of "Protect and Serve" officers of the law I'd been brought up to respect, but then I must confess to being a bit sheltered. Mr. Price for sure knows the sights, sounds and smells of New York, cops, crime and the boys in the hood. He nails his characters, black and white, cop and victim, any and all. He does it with dialogue the way no other writer can. He puts you in the pants of his characters. When they're frustrated, you're frustrated. When they wanna scream, you do too. When they face away, when they cower, you're ashamed, not just for poor Eric, but maybe for yourself too, because you wonder if you'd do different.
Can you tell I really liked this book. I could go on forever, but I'm going to stop now, because I think I'm going to pick the book back up and start all over again.
Book Review: Not a thriller, but a smart, incisive piece of social drama
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the joys of reading Richard Price is his strong grip on characters and their world. Never the most interested in plots, Price instead uses crime and violence as a starting point, watching how his characters react and deal with their actions and the crimes of others. Lush Life, his latest, is no different, but in some ways, it's the best of the worlds he's created, if only because of how open he is with the reader. The "who" of the central crime isn't a mystery for very long; instead, Price lays all of his cards on the table, allowing readers to progress through the book as a drama. The result isn't for all tastes; I've read countless reviews on Amazon about how dull the book is. But from page one, I was gripped. No one writes dialogue and speech like Price, whose conversations would work just as well as radio drama as in a book. From the myriad traffic stops of the Quality of Life squad to the grueling interrogation scenes, from the confrontation between two friends whose relationship is changed over a gunfight to a self-serving memorial service, Price creates his world through observation and listening. As with Pelecanos, it's no wonder he ended up working on The Wire - his intelligence and willingness not to insult the reader fits that show perfectly, and the way that his characters are filled with shades of gray is fascinating. From the conflicted, self-loathing Eric Cash to the devastated father of a victim, Price creates a world so real that I hated for it to come to an end, a rare feeling that I get anymore from books. No, it may not be the thriller to end all thrillers, but as a incisive, smart piece of drama as much about our times as of them, Lush Life is a masterpiece with so much quiet power you may not even realize it until you sit back and take it all in.Book Review: Writing Visceral Yet Disjointed
Summary: 3 Stars
//Clockers// and //The Wire// writer Richard Price has penned a new novel entitled //Lush Life//, a modern, gritty story of the inner-city landscape. The reader may suspect the title is pure irony, since "lush" seems an odd way to describe the goings on in this book, which focuses mainly on criminals and police. The novel is set in New York City, and the book centers on the two lower-east sides of the city: one the well-to-do, and the other not-so-well-to-do. A murder of one street punk by another sets the entire plot in motion, and what ensues is a work of multidimensional proportions.
Suffice it to say that Richard Price has a great knack for dialogue--even perhaps too great a knack, given the way the dialogue almost overwhelms the work (which may be a result of his screen writing past). Much is true to life, yet this doesn't always make for an easy read. Price has an odd writing style, and either the reader will accept his ungrammatical sentences (and I'm not referring to dialogue, where being ungrammatical is perfectly acceptable) or merely be annoyed, as was this reader. One may wonder why Price chose to depart from standard usage, as it can be distracting and doesn't seem to confer any real benefit. In any event, the writing is visceral, and Price clearly has a great understanding of the workings of the streets. He achieves a dizzying, disjointed feel to the story that seems to echo the fragmentary nature of real life. Many readers will enjoy //Lush Life//, yet the work may seem a little scattered to some.
Reviewed by
Aaron Stypes
Book Review: I seldom give ANYTHING 5 stars - this book deserves all 5
Summary: 5 Stars
NO SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW!: I read a lot of non-fiction but occassionally get the urge to read a novel and picked this one rather impulsively. I'm not a regular reader of murder mysteries or similar type books. This novel "works" on many levels. First, the dialogue is very well written - each of the main characters has a distinctive speaking style and the author moved back and forth among them rather deftly (or did an excellent job in his re-write process after his first draft.) Second, the main and ancillary story lines come across as realistic. Third - despite the various story lines, I was eager to learn how the murder would be resolved - whether it would be solved, and if so, how. Fourth - the characters were well developed. Each of the characters brings his or her own baggage, just as we all do in real life, and without being overly psychologically dramatic the author shows us how each character's baggage influences his or her behavior. There aren't any simplistically drawn primary characters.
If you've seen any episodes of series"The Wire" you are familiar with Price's work and know that he understands the workings of low-income, high crime neighborhoods and the law enforcement officers who work there.
This is the best novel I have read in years, and I will absolutely read it again, more slowly. I rarely ever have any interest in re-reading books but with this one I very much want to do so to spend more time looking at word choices and descriptions to see how they affected the story for me.