Lush Life: A Novel
by Richard Price
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Book Reviews of Lush Life: A Novel
Book Review: 200 pages of story in a 400 page book.
Summary: 3 Stars
I have to agree with a lot of the other voices here - this book is just too long. At 100 pages I loved it, at 200 pages I was ready for it to end, at 300 pages I was annoyed, and at 400 pages I felt cheated. The excellent writing (and the great reviews) kept me going, hoping he'd pull it out deeper into the book. He doesn't. It's pretty much the same characters doing the same things over and over and over. Tiny tidbits of character development and exploration, but nothing satisfying.
And when the crime is finally wrapped up, it's particularly unsatisfying. No twist, no reveal, not even a moment's worth of tension. You don't learn anything particularly interesting about the characters or their motivation, it's just "Oh, case closed. The end."
I'd love to recommend this book for the quality of the writing, but I can't since investing in the first part means having to sit through the rest to see how it turns out.
Book Review: another great one from Price
Summary: 4 Stars
If Price is not entirely authentic, he has brilliantly created the illusion of being so. Either way, Lush Life has all of the grit and the ring of the streets that I expect from Price. I read somewhere today -- I read so many blogs and periodicals online that I'm sorry I can't cite the exact source -- that Price has always had to place his stories in the fictional city of Dempsy, New Jersey, because the NYPD wouldn't permit him access to certain records or archives, I'm not sure exactly which ones. However, New York finally relented and gave him the keys to the kingdom, and this novel, set in a very real New York City, is the result. I also saw today in New York Magazine (that one I remember) that it was listed as one of the fifteen or so great New York books published between 1968 and 2008. I absolutely agree. A must for Price fans, and will probably please most others who don't insist on "pretty."Book Review: Shabby Chic
Summary: 4 Stars
Price's latest police procedural/slice of life novel drops us right onto the grimy streets of New York, this time the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The neighborhood is a volatile one - a community in flux, where many young college educated professionals-in-training, mostly actors and writers, have been replacing a long standing eastern European Jewish population - one bordered by the PJ's, low income apartments inhabited by mostly Hispanic and African Americans.
Price guides us through a gentrified minefield using authentic dialog to convey what becomes, more than a mere crime novel, a topical neo-noir gem. His protagonist, Eric Cash is a flawed, yet sympathetic, artiste; The denizens of the PJ's come to life on the page. All of his characters conspire to limn a poignant and believable portrayal of urban conflict in today's society.
4.0 STARS
Book Review: Overrated; cop characters are good; drags in the last half
Summary: 3 Stars
The book got hyped in, as I recall, magazines like The Economist and newspapers like the WSJ. It doesn't match the hype. There is no mystery, really. The book toys briefly with the idea that the real killer is not the obvious one, but that idea is abandoned early on. The cop characters are more believable than the hipster or gangsta characters, perhaps reflecting the author's experience or research. The story drags big time in the last half. Some Amazonians have complained about how it reads like a TV movie or some such thing. It does, but that aspect is not so bothersome. What is offputting is the weird punctuation, which at least one Amazonian has mentioned. And some of the dialogue doesn't sound true, particularly out of the mouths of the gangsta characters. It was my first Richard Price book; I can't guarantee there will be a second.Book Review: Full of life and lush indeed
Summary: 5 Stars
What a great book! Confusing start (at least for me) it just leaps into the tale, with what seems to be hundreds of characters each given their 15 minutes in the sun of the author's attention. But gradually things start to make sense and we follow detective Matty Clark through a case, neither extraordinary nor enigmatic, just what happens to all when a senseless tragedy happens to one...
I particularily liked the character of Eric, and was on the edge of my seat for him. I had hopes for Matty too, but I don't know if he will live up to them. I just hope things go well for him and the Other One - see, just because I closed the book doesn't mean I think for a moment the characters lives have stopped. That's how good it is, you think they are real, and will continue with their reality even after you've stopped observing them.