Lush Life: A Novel
by Richard Price
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Book Reviews of Lush Life: A Novel
Book Review: A Lush Slice of Life Carved from New York City's Historic Lower East Side
Summary: 5 Stars
If one of a novelist's goals is to create a milieu - a sense of place, of sights and sounds and smells - that is palpable despite being built from mere words on a page, then Richard Price has unquestionably achieved that goal in LUSH LIFE. He gets everything right - the restaurant scene, the Lower East Side street scene, the grungy, grimy police station scene, the roving, late night Quality of Life police task force scene. Add to this atmosphere a street murder and a core set of ethnically and socioeconomically diverse characters who orbit and occasionally intersect one another's lives and you have a bravura literary performance. Or to put it simply, I could not put this book down from the moment I started reading. For someone who has lived and worked around NYC for well over thirty years, LUSH LIFE read and felt like a walk along those same Lower East Side streets, in all their rough and tumble grittiness. I recognized and felt transported at the same time.
LUSH LIFE could loosely be labeled a mystery novel without a mystery. At the novel's outset, Price describes a late-night sidewalk robbery gone wrong that takes place on New York City's Lower East Side, at the amorphous intersection of black and Hispanic housing projects, the wildly expanded reaches of Chinatown, and the gentrifying fringe areas dominated by college-educated whites and a blossoming club scene. Eric Cash, an assistant restaurant manager at Café Berkmann a popular Lower East Side eatery is helping the new bartender, Ike Marcus, deliver Ike's drunken friend Steven Boulware to his Eldridge Street apartment when they are confronted by two young men just one door from Boulware's home. Eric meekly hands over his wallet, eyes glued to the sidewalk, but Ike steps forward. "Not tonight, my man," he utters with a smile just before he is shot and killed.
Price reveals the perpetrators in the earliest pages - a mostly truant high schooler named Tristan Acevedo and an older Arvin "Little Dap" Williams - along with their reason for staging the robbery. The vast majority of the book proceeds to trace the efforts of two detectives, Matty Clark and Yolanda Bello, to solve the crime and hopefully arrest the shooter. Yet in reality, the true subject of LUSH LIFE is the effect Ike Marcus's death has on everyone involved, from Eric Cash and Steven Boulware to Ike's father Billy, stepmother Minette and stepsister Nina, from Matty and the ultra-empathetic Yolanda to Tristan and his family. Everyone suffers the consequences of their actions that night or in the immediate aftermath, and for some, their past sins are also revisited upon them to amplify their punishment. Only Boulware, whose drunken stupor precipitated the events, appears impervious to the consequences, but Price sends him up as the most shamelessly "Bonfire-ish" of all his characters.
In a strange and perhaps unintentional way, LUSH LIFE offers up a fictional apologia for the "quality of life" law enforcement approach so enthusiastically promoted by former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Yet at the end of 450 highly readable pages dominated by dialogue over a single robbery/murder, Richard Price also reminds us that there will be another one tonight or tomorrow and the process will begin all over again with another victim, another set of suspects and perps, and another set of families forced to absorb the collateral damage.
What Richard Price has fashioned in LUSH LIFE is a toned down, more realistic version of BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES. Unlike Tom Wolfe's, Price's characters are not blatant caricatures, nor is pyrotechnic social satire Price's main objective. For his efforts, Richard Price has achieved a work that accurately captures the sights, sounds, and character of a richly historic but often-overlooked section of Manhattan. He has also portrayed spot on a neighborhood gentrification scenario - with its associated infusion of young, moneyed artistes and professionals and pushing out of the minorities and elderly who live there - that has played out repeatedly in New York City and still does today in Harlem, Hell's Kitchen, Prospect Park, Bedford Stuyvesant, and many other areas. In doing so, Mr. Price has put the inevitable cultural, racial, and economic tensions of this process under a high-power, highly revealing microscope. LUSH LIFE is a stunningly effective work in every respect.
Book Review: An amazing accomplishment
Summary: 5 Stars
There's something Dostoevskian about Richard Price's writing for his way of ensnaring a whole atmosphere and richly turning it into an authentic aesthetic environment. He captures Lower East Side New York just as Dostoevsky does for St. Petersburg, with a full set of tensions and passions, blazing and smoldering, all full of life. And while Price lacks Dostoevsky's all-too-Russian tendency to throw prose economy out the window, the effect is just the same: this writing may floor you, and you might not want it to end.
The plot centers on the shooting of bartender Ike Marcus and the investigation of restaurant manager Eric Cash. Ike is a twenty-something writer-to-be/waiter whose artistic and cultural ambition comes off as doggedly annoying to Cash, who is Ike 10 years crustier and later, struggling to accept the denouement of his writing career, which --- as for so many young, hip, New York pseudo-literati --- failed before it began. As the investigation trudges on, Price uproots the political and socio-economic history and tensions of the neighborhood, and expands his lens to include an impressive and exciting array of characters and subplots.
There are three characteristics in LUSH LIFE that make it an amazing accomplishment. The first, it goes without saying, is the dialogue, which may be the best you've ever read or heard. If one has heard anything about Price, it's his virtuosic capacity for dialogue. Cops, hipsters, recovering hipsters, ethnic populations and every other supporting cast member sound crystal clear, saying just as much with the style of their speech as their content.
The second is his flair for tension. On the most basic level, the neighborhood is experiencing the clash of young, white gentrification, which seeks to push out the local ethnic communities enough to feel safe at night but not so much as to feel like midtown (though for some that may not be far enough). This modern arrangement sharply clashes with the Jewish-tenement history of the area (one man has converted a de-sanctified synagogue into his house --- but has another house for sleeping in). The hipsters are at war with themselves in an arms race for authenticity, which only pantomimes their fakery.
On a formal level, Price uses many of the alluring conventions of typical crime fiction, complete with a male-female cop duo that is actually original and interesting, while resisting the pull of trite genre fiction. And on a more individual scale, the lush characters of this novel are full of interpersonal tensions, and most of them are conflicted souls themselves. Price shows both sides of these stories but is more or less unforgiving as he paints few truly admirable characters and fewer heroes. But this isn't take-no-prisoners vigilante writing. There is a supple humanity in each of these souls, and while there is little heroism here, there's also little villainy.
Price's third gift is his ability to construct a city in letters. When reading LUSH LIFE, one feels transported into the thick of the Lower East Side's ugliness and beauty. This novel is endlessly expansive, and for every major plot line, there is enough character complexity and hidden narratives that demand one turns back and explores the side streets. A third of the way through, the more poetic writing slips away, but before disappointment sets in, this plot sculpted into a whole world invites the reader into its clutches. Good luck letting go; you may not wish to.
The appeal of this book is the appeal of New York itself: its beauty, its ugliness, the beauty from that ugliness, the constant change and destruction, overturning of the present that conjures ghosts from the past. Price says it best: "what really drew him to the area wasn't its full-circle irony but its nowness, its right here and nowness, which spoke to the true engine of his being, a craving for it made many times worse by a complete ignorance of how this `it' would manifest itself." LUSH LIFE destroys temporality, meshing past, present and the hopes and fears of the future. In doing so, it stretches into an infinite complexity that vibrantly photographs the landscape of our contemporary urban cultural consciousness.
--- Reviewed by Max Falkowitz
Book Review: A strong pulse and fabulous dialogue
Summary: 5 Stars
In Price's latest Manhattan's Lower East Side is a dangerous place, steeped in history, and pulsing with life, attitude, grit and hilarity. Its people are driven by hope, despair and calamity. Gang bangers, cops, wannabes and ordinary people just trying to get by - Price arouses compassion for even the scariest, the most lost, the doomed.
The story is an ordinary one. Three youngish white guys, out late, drunk. They get mugged. One of the drunks says, " `Not tonight, my man,' " and is shot dead. Or, as a cop on the scene says, " `Suicide by mouth.' "
The reader has already met the players. Eric Cash, 35, restaurant manager at Berkmann's. Like everyone in the restaurant business it's just his day job, but after years of negligible accomplishment his "unsatisfied yearning for validation was starting to make it near impossible for him to sit through a movie or read a book or even case out a new restaurant, all pulled off increasingly by those his age or younger, without running face-first into a wall."
Eric is a reliable, loyal sort, good at reading people or, as he has come to think of himself, a "boy-faced dog."
Ike Marcus is no one's dog. The new bartender at Berkmann's, he's young, brash and confident. The third of the trio is Ike's friend Steve, a serious drunk. The three are celebrating Steve's audition call-back when the mugging happens and Ike winds up dead at the hands of a couple of black or Latino kids.
This is Eric's version, Steve having collapsed in a drunken coma on the sidewalk.
Then there's Matty, lead cop on the murder. "Matty preferred his outdoor crimes to come about in the wee hours, the eerie repose of the street allowing for a deeper dialogue with the scene; and so he now pondered the shell casing, .22 or 25, thinking, Amateurs, 4:00 a.m. the desperado hour, the shooter or shooters young, probably junkies....now they'll hole up for a little, look at each other, `Oh, man, did we just...,' shrug it off, get high, then come back out for more."
It looks like a slam dunk, but a couple steps up, clubbers, who happened to be across the street at the time. They saw no kids of any color. All they saw was Eric, with something metallic in his hand. And just like that, it looks like a different kind of a slam dunk.
And even we the reader, who have already met the two project kids - sad, lonely Tristan, stuck between his drunken, abusive, ex-stepfather and his longing for belonging, and his new mentor, Little Dap, already a veteran of the streets, even we come to half believe that Eric's jealousy of Ike's youth and vitality somehow led to the shooting.
The witnesses are so sure of themselves. They have no agenda, no connection to the crime other than what they saw. And Eric's lies begin to pile up, his trapped, floundering demeanor grates, his fear becomes contemptible.
Still, Matty's a bit uncomfortable. No gun, no evidence, no "why."
" `Nice to have a why,' Yolonda muttered. `Why'd that Salgado kid get shot last year, remember? Borrowed an iPod, gave it back without recharging it.'
`C'mon, that was in the Cahans.'
`Oh. Right. Excuse me. I forgot. This guy's white. Sorry. What was I thinking.' "
Before the day is out Eric is banged up in the Tombs.
But this is just the beginning. We haven't yet met Ike's father, shell-shocked with grief and disbelief, or Ike's beguiling, persevering stepmother, or achingly young stepsister. We haven't met Matty's alienated sons (the "Big One" and the "Other One") or Little Dap's posturing homeys. We have yet to read Tristan's labored rap lyrics, or plumb the depths of Eric's desperation.
Price ("Clockers," "Freedomland," co-writer of HBO's "The Wire") takes us inside all their heads, into their secret, sad, scary places. His dialog crackles with place and personality. He shows us how expectations shape events, and how big a part luck plays in our lives.
There's plenty of suspense but this rich narrative is more about human nature than plot. Price's empathy, eye for detail and ear for talk make this urban fiction at its finest.
Book Review: Best I've read since MYSTIC RIVER
Summary: 5 Stars
LUSH LIFE is the best crime novel I've read since MYSTIC RIVER. Like MYSTIC RIVER, the emphasis is on characterization and setting. The plot is nothing much to brag about. Three men, a bartender, a restaurant manager, and an aspiring actor are held up after clubbing until early in the morning. The bartender refuses to give up his wallet saying "Not tonight, my man" and the gun goes off, killing him.
When two unreliable witnesses point to Eric Cash, the restaurant manager, as the shooter, the investigation heads in the wrong direction. When Matty Clark, the lead investigator, puts Cash through the third degree, he becomes an uncooperative witness.
Price is a master at characterization, especially the minor ones. There's a little Chinese man who may have been robbed by the same hold-up team who's simply a scream. Of the major characters Yolanda, one of Matty's partners, stands out above the rest. She put the "c'" in compassion, but she can be hard when she needs to be, and she's not afraid to put Matty in his place when he needs it. She's also very funny and does a spot-on impression of Matty complaining about "the brass." Billy Marcus, Eric's father, who feels guilty about not being around when his son was growing up, will tear your heart out. He wants to help with the investigation, but he's more of a hindrance than a help until almost the end. To complicate matters, Matty falls for Billy's wife.
Like Dickens and London, Richard Price must spend most of his time walking around New York City. He knows the place like the back of his hand. There's a scene where Fenton Ma, a Chinese detective, interviews a potential witness who sleeps on a plank in a crowded tenement, and sublets it to another Chinese man while he's working. Price also takes us inside the home of Harry Steele, owner of the upscale restaurant where Eric Cash works. It's a former synagogue and Price zooms in on the Jewish astrological tiles, pointing out that there are no people in the representations of the various signs. He also takes us inside BD Wing Funerary that sells paper replicas of everything from Gucci loafers to three-story private houses. The replicas are for dead people. You burn them at Chinese funerals so the dead guy can take them with him into the afterlife.
Thematically, the novel is about more than just a sense of physical loss, Eric Cash, once an aspiring actor and screen writer, hates himself because he fell for the lure of fame when he was really always only a waiter. Matty Clark also has two sons who are heading down the wrong path. He can't help but wonder if they would have turned out better if he'd been around while they were growing up. There's a sort of "There but for the grace of God" thing going on as well. Tristan, the trigger man during the hold-up, is a sympathetic character in many respects. He lives with his abusive former step father, his dead mother's former husband, and he babysits "The Hamsters," his former step father's children from his new relationship. He's really a good kid, as Yolanda intuits immediately of course, but he doesn't know how to be a man and has no role models.
Early on, LUSH LIFE can be a little off-putting in respect to language. It's hard to interpret some of the slang, but Price is really showing the reader respect by not spelling out every little thing for him. Hang in there. Eventually, it`ll grow on you.
Book Review: Price "Tags"
Summary: 5 Stars
Richard Price has a very interesting quirk in all of his writing: He re-tells the same stories over and over again through the mouths of different characters. Don't misunderstand: I'm not saying he recycles plot lines. The guy literally has a character tell an anecdote from his life that has been used in another Price book, as though the writer is a graffiti artist "tagging" his own work. Example: In "Lush Life," a character tells the story of being sent to a school psychologist and coming home shouting "I'm a whackadoo!" Price has used this anecdote before, in "Bloodbrothers." So far, I've counted 3 tags in Price's work: the aforementioned "whackadoo" one; another involving his obese grandmother who loves wrestling matches and took him to monster-movie matinees; a third in which a character tells of being a child with an overbearing mother, who one days tells her "Maybe you shouldn't love me so much," so the mother refuses to speak to the child (used in "Freedomland" and "The Breaks"). I'm sure there are more--anyone notice this?
Anyway, as for "Lush Life": Like another reviewer, I too wish Price would return to his pre-crime-novel days. Maybe it's the lack of a central character, a main POV: Richie in "The Wanderers," Stony in "Bloodbrothers" (which was really The Wanderers, Book II), even the uneven Kenny in "Ladies Man" and Peter in "The Breaks." All of them felt imbued with Price's jittery, hot-wired but stuck in neutral mania; there was an energy there that propelled me across pages and chapters, that made my heart race as I was reading breathless sentences. I felt I were looking through the eyes of these characters, walking around their world with them. Ray from "Samaritan" was like the missing link in Price's fiction--a direct descendant of Peter Keller who strays into the Jungle Jims of "Clockers." Price has admitted he doesn't like doing this--placing himself in the narrative--but for me the words out of Ray's head ring truer than anything we witness here.
It's not that I don't like "Lush Life," I just feel in the later novels that I'm watching the action rather than living it. Price talks often about what it's like to ride in the back seat of a police cruiser, and that's what these novels feel like to me. I'm not those characters on the street; I'm not even the cop driving the car. I'm in the back seat watching it all go down. Now, mind you, it's still a unique perspective, and nobody does urban voyeur better than Price. Then again, there's an element of trust involved: We have no real-life connection to most of his characters, so we have to trust him when he puts words in their mouths. They SOUND real, but what do we know?
Still, "Lush Life" does display some of Price's best writing; and at his best he's as good as it gets. Still, how much is there to say about cops that wasn't already covered in "Clockers" and "Freedomland"? It's part of Price's blessing and curse that he tends to nail it on his first attempt--and I'm not sure there's anything new to say after that. Strike from "Clockers" was a perfect character. As were the "Five-Oh." Where do you go from there? Suffice it to say, Price's writing is beyond anything else out there--the stock cops, detectives and PIs of countless crime novels. So ultimately, read this for the prose. But someday, I'd love to see a return to Richie Gennaro from "The Wanderers." Or someone like him.