Lush Life: A Novel
by Richard Price
|
List Price: Our Price: $2.17 You Save: $23.83 (92%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Lush Life: A Novel
Book Review: Boring Story, Boring Character, Overrated novel
Summary: 1 Stars
This book was highly recommended to me by my local indie bookstore owner. The book started off kind of weird. Within the first few chapters, Price introduced what seemed like hundreds of characters without really clearly identifying any of them. I had a very difficult time keeping track of all the characters.
The first few chapters were interesting and paced well. But then, after the murder of Ike, the book just DRAGGED on and on and on and on.
It was probably one of the most boring books I have read in my adult life. And since I almost always finish a book even if I don't like it, I finished this one. It seemed like it took forever to finish, probably due to the fact that I fell asleep almost every time I even glanced at the cover.
The blurb on the dust jacket basically tells you the entire story. There is no real MYSTERY that needs to be solved. You, the reader, know who killed Ike. You know WHY he killed Ike. You know everything. The only mystery that needs to be solved is: do the police ever find and arrest the murderer.
If you enjoy boring books with no real plot and wishy-washy charters who you really never feel any connection to, then this is the book for you. But, if you are like me and need a well thought out, interesting storyline and fleshed out charters, skip this one.
This was the first novel of Price's that I have read. I doubt I will be reading any of his other works.
Book Review: What was so great?
Summary: 3 Stars
I thought it was very good at plunking you down in this particular group of settings -- different neighborhoods in NYCity. Richard Price is good at characterization. Very good at dialog. It's set in NYCity so I love that. I"m not recommending though ... the ending is a bit of a let down -- I mean the ending not the climax. I'm not sure why I say that because in many ways the ending was satisfying. In a novel, dénouement is tricky ... it's a very tricky part of the book. Here's another thing: I didn't like any of the characters. That bothers me when I read.
Is it a sign of true maturity when you can really like a book even though you don't like any of the characters? Dunno. I think it's a sign of maturity when you can recognize that a writer is really good at writing even though you dislike the characters. For example, I thought the plotting and writing in Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter was really good. Really good. But I intensely disliked everyone. And, ultimately, that means I would only recommend the book with reservations. Maybe I'm being unfair ... because what if that was Porter's intention all along ... to portray these characters so that we wouldn't like them? Back to Lush Life: I'm not recommending it because the farther away from reading the book I am, I like it less and less and say to myself: yeah, so what was so great? There was something significant that was missing for me.
Book Review: Eventually slightly boring
Summary: 3 Stars
There were four glowing blurb testimonials on the back of the dust jacket for this book. Dennis Lehane calls Price the greatest writer of dialog this country has ever produced. Ehh. Not so sure about that.
Russell Banks says he's a whole lot funnier than Balzac. Well, Balzac isn't your go to guy for comedy but I didn't laugh once while reading this book. I think I smiled one time.
Francine Prose (not sure if that's a real name) says his writing has the desperation of someone desperate to tell the absolute truth. And, I guess I'd agree with that. But that only goes so far. Someone can tell you an absolutely true story and do it in a boring or unenlightening way.
The last blurb is by Charles Taylor of Salon who remarks that "Perhaps we are no longer used to novelists who are superb reporters . . ." and that is exactly the right way to think of this book. It's fiction but a superb bit of reporting. But after getting through a large portion of the 455 pages, the reader starts to want something more than a good grasp of lower level detail. Even the much lauded ear for dialog seems to be detecting just two types of speech among New Yorkers, world weary and semi-literate. I'd like to have given this book 3.5 stars and I don't really understand at all giving it 5. Shouldn't 5 stars be reserved for books infused with some philosophical content or meta level message?
Book Review: He's actually a good writer. Maybe worth two and a half stars. But you probably shouldn't read it.
Summary: 2 Stars
Here's the good: Richard Price has a good ear for dialogue, though the blurbs on the back talking about how he's "the greatest writer of dialogue, living or dead" America has ever seen are ludicrous (especially when written his Wire co-writer, and, I assume buddy, Dennis Lehane). His characters are not one dimensional. They're flush and full, though just short of interesting. And he writes well. He's a good writer. You sense that, if he were trying to entertain a little more, and trying less to be deeper than the story requires (this story, anyway), that this could have been a good book.
Instead, here's the bad news: The story, such as it is, is nothing. And it certainly doesn't deserve or require 450 pages. Nothing happens. And that's okay if you have characters that are so interesting that small things become more resonating. But, what he has instead are well-rounded, interesting characters that do very little of note or interest. Around the first 100 pages I thought, "Maybe I should put it down." At 200, I thought, "I've invested so much time in this I may as well finish." At 300, I thought, "When will this be OVER???" Finally, at 450, I thought, "I should have quit at 100."
At least he's good enough writer that I don't feel awful having read it.
But that doesn't mean you have to.
Book Review: At it again
Summary: 4 Stars
'Lush Life', unsurprisingly perhaps, reads like hybrid of two of his previous novels, 'Clockers' and 'Freedomland'. But where 'Freedomland' got bogged down in a total lack of movement, 'Lush Life' sets out a more vivid landscape and cast and with the lead detective Matty Clarke, a more interesting character to dissect the city. Price's strength remains the clarity with which he sets out the divisions of the city. On the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the projects back up against the tenements, once filled with immigrant families, now charging their descendants $1500 a month for the same tight quarters. Price has great fun with the self conscious hipsters who've come to populate the area, the way in which the rest of the neighborhood tends to operate as if the intruders are invisible and how the police seem to be the major link between the two groups. It's a portrait that Price paints well, but as always with Price, this isn't so much a who-dunnit more than a why'd-he-do it? The characters are, for the most part, well drawn, particularly Eric Cash, a second rate actor, first rate restaurant manager. On the down side, the victim's father, granted many pages of description, never quite comes to life and that deprives the book of an underlying grief that would have turned it from the very good to the great.