Lush Life: A Novel
by Richard Price
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Book Reviews of Lush Life: A Novel
Book Review: The apes that raised me were surprisingly intelligent
Summary: 5 Stars
Matty Clark, the big bucket-headed Irishman at the heart of Lush Life, is just exactly the type of guy I want to read about in a book. Past peradventure a palpable plethora of powerfully portrayed personalities populate the pages of Price's positively priceless prose poetry but what the hey where am I oh yes the library like wow poleaxingly potent panatela for fair a fat fugging fatty but yes ahem for me it's Matty Clark who stands out in this lively and colourful downtown crowd. Matty is a bleeding gem so he is. Plus the whodunnit aspect of Lush Life isn't half so engrossing as the demented particulars of people and place. Seriously now, what we have here is a vigorously entertaining slice of life on the Lower East Side. Compulsively readable writing and a compelling character study to boot. Funny too, Richard Price can crack you up six ways from Sunday. One of the little dudes from the projects has his swaggering gait described hilariously as hardcore penguin. The mantra of the four undercover sweatshirts from the Quality of Life Task Force: Dope, guns, overtime. That's just brilliant that is. I loved this book enough to read it three or four times already. Unashamedly puts the procedural back in police procedural. And the scene with Matty waiting for his nitwit son that closes the novel is emphatically worth waiting for too. The perfectly pitched parting shot. Even the image left by the very last line is a deep satisfaction.Book Review: If Dickens wrote crime fiction
Summary: 4 Stars
I sat at a family event this week and discussed this book with my dad and brother. My dad, who loves suspense books, found precious little in this novel, and abandoned it. Since we already know exactly who did what, the only suspense is when, if or how the truth will be revealed. My brother loved it and called it "If Dickens wrote crime fiction." My response falls somewhere in between abandonment and embrace. A reader needs patience and emotional investment to see this book through.
I think "Dickensian" is an apt way to describe the book, as it offers such a catalog of time, place and speech. No detail is too small to include and no one is spared the scrutiny of the authorial eye. It also concerns itself with the intersection of social classes in a very Dickensian way, the haves, the have-nots, and the people in between who cater to one class and fall prey to the other.
I liked the characters, admiring and despising Yolonda at the same time, really feeling for Cash and Billy, and wishing I could follow Matty's upcoming 'adventures' after this book ends. He has a lot to answer for. The dialog is peerless and the portrayal of the Byzantine procedurals is disheartening. Equally disheartening is the view of the perpetrators. Price is so matter-of-fact about their lives and options, and somehow this flatness only adds to the despair you feel as a reader, especially for Tristan.
Book Review: A detective story without much intrigue
Summary: 2 Stars
Somehow I had the wrong idea about this book. I thought it was more contemporary literature offering interesting character studies and perspectives on urban life. In fact, it is really just a detective story without any intriguing questions about what happened or what will happen (most of the book is based on the perspective of one detective, Matty Clark, and you learn all the details of the featured crime up front--for some reason I had the impression from the blurbs that it was more about people in the community, not primarily the police). The story is gussied up quite a bit with elaborate details, but those details seemed to me like a familiar relaying of stereotypes about New York. The type of perspective on New York that subtly criticizes the city as a way of glorfying it, reinforcing NYC narcissism by highlighting it and trying to make it seem really interesting.
So I'll admit that my low rating of this book is partially because I felt misled as to what it was about. That was probably my fault for not looking into it more carefully. I'd also note that the book was reasonably readable considering that there was nothing about the story to really figure out. Richard Price is an author that comes up a lot in contemporary culture, and I am glad to get more familiar with his writing so I have it as a point of reference. The book was not terrible, just mostly forgettable.
Book Review: sublime crime novel
Summary: 5 Stars
I love the double-entendre in this title. "Lush" can be taken to describe the classy restaurants and shops of the Upper East Side of NYC, or it can refer to the alcohol and drug abuse that is rampant. One reviewer noted that the mystery in the novel is resolved in the first third of the book. However, what the reviewer called "mystery" struck me as frustrating, so that I was relieved by its early resolution. The author seemed to be sowing the seeds of doubt for the reader, and I thought it made for a rather beguiling beginning actually. In any case, this is not a mystery novel or a thriller. It's a novel about solving a crime from a police detective's point of view. The cop is Matty Clark, and the other main character is Eric Cash, a restaurant manager who flees the scene when Ike, one of the guys he's out partying with, is shot on the street. Ike's father is so disoriented by the death of this son that he avoids his family and even tries to solve the murder himself. Matty finally begins to examine his own family issues, as his sons are not exactly model citizens. More exasperating, though, to Matty, is the lack of cooperation on the part of his supervisors. When it becomes clear that their mistakes have been a major hindrance to the totally botched investigation, Matty has to take the blame and overcome the consequences--persuading an indignant witness to provide more clues.Book Review: like a balloon
Summary: 2 Stars
...full of color on the outside, full of air on the inside. The story of a crime in a gentrifying neighborhood. A young waiter with writerly aspirations is gunned down during a robbery as a result of mouthing off to a young thug with a gun. The detective in charge of the case - a less than perfect character - becomes determined to find the killer. In the end, the police does, as a result of a confession from an arrested guy. The story sounds simple, but that would an insult to simple. It is actually simplistic, with a crime that is solved prosaically, and action that stays at the level of words. This is CRIME, in a literary sense, with a lot of ink spent to create ATMOSPHERE, to DEPICT life in a way that impresses the review section of the New York Times. I guess the author was afraid that making the action thrilling would cross the line into airport thrillers, whereas he wants to be an AUTHOR. It says that Price worked for the TV show, "The Wire." I liked that show, especially seasons 1 and 2, but be forewarned: an episode of that is far more satisfying and enjoyable than anything here. I did like reading this book, but it was in the expectation that the story would develop in interesting ways, that there would be well-plotted action, an interesting twist. It didn't, so I feel I was taken for a ride.