Goodreads | Lush Life

Mike rated it:

11/21/07

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: fans of The Wire, of great social novels, of crime fiction

Just got this, and zipped through the prologue before crashing out last evening, and--well, it's Price, which means it's priceless. More soon, but I've been afflicted of late by too much interference with my reading life and too many half-hearted stabs at too many half-decent books. I seem to have started thirty-seven things, and the half-eaten remains litter my side of the bed. I'm really jazzed for the Price (and, Thanksgiving on the horizon, may have the time to read more than 7 pages a da...more Just got this, and zipped through the prologue before crashing out last evening, and--well, it's Price, which means it's priceless. More soon, but I've been afflicted of late by too much interference with my reading life and too many half-hearted stabs at too many half-decent books. I seem to have started thirty-seven things, and the half-eaten remains litter my side of the bed. I'm really jazzed for the Price (and, Thanksgiving on the horizon, may have the time to read more than 7 pages a day).

And just finished. First, there are bound to be reviews starting (maybe even concluding) with one complaint: this novel recalls Price's last three so very much that it may--if you're not paying attention? or maybe just not looking past the familiar--seem like a cover version of _Clockers_ and a retread of favored concerns, milieus, methods. And I'll admit: it opens sort of like a mystery, quickly drawing us a sense of the agents and targets, walking right up to a crime, then--the event itself an open question waiting for answers--we spend the next four hundred pages finding out what really went down and (Price's astonishing precise talent) watching the deep consequences of crime reveal the shape of general American and specific individual and community pathologies.

Okay, fair cop--that's those other books, too. But, damn, this is like a master class in teasing out the devastation visible behind and through one, small, meaningless act of violence. The book reads like a police procedural, taking place over a couple short weeks (plus coda), and I rushed headlong wondering what next, tension ratcheting up. But, really--what was the mystery? There was no real sense of who, or even why, done it; further, the conclusions, while nothing like pat, never really seem in doubt. Yet such mystery--each scene a revelation of character. Price is about the most observant, generous, clear-eyed chronicler of how people fuck up working in American writing today. And the suspense is the sick tense worry of how people are going to fuck up yet again, and again.

'Cause you care--deeply--about these people. Like "The Wire," for which he now writes an episode or two and which (according to its creator David Simon) owes its very existence a huge debt to Price's work on _Clockers_, we get a mass of information about how people actually work in (and against) the institutions of law enforcement, how class collisions underpin the American city. But unlike the show--which I love, which is the best damn television show ever made--Price cares a lot more about these people than the systems; drawing out a vision of the context more carefully underscores his compassionate attention to being stuck, to trying to do what you can.

But enough of content? The man can sing. At a wake for the novel's victim, one paragraph is one sentence ducking and weaving to rhythmic perfection a vision of the city: "The musicians and the mourners wended their way past the city rigs, the firemen and garbagemen impassively leaning against the cabs, then began to coil around the effigy [a ritual straw figure of the deceased] until they had created a ring of people six candles deep, the mostly ethnic locals, many with small children straddling their necks, making up an irregular seventh ring, the traffic cops just now starting to catch up once the outer blockades were lifted an even more amorphous eighth."

And so on. Really great, great book.
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Rick rated it:

03/22/08

bookshelves: fiction

Read in March, 2008

Price’s latest novel is like his two previous ones, Freedomland and Clockers, rooted in a real news story, but not a shallow “Law & Order” fictionalization of it, but something deeper and richer. Also, like the two previous novels, it is a genre stretching police procedural. Set in the Lower East Side in contemporary times, Lush Life follows the human consequences of a late night street crime—three young writers/actors, one too drunk to stand by himself, are coming home after a long ...more Price’s latest novel is like his two previous ones, Freedomland and Clockers, rooted in a real news story, but not a shallow “Law & Order” fictionalization of it, but something deeper and richer. Also, like the two previous novels, it is a genre stretching police procedural. Set in the Lower East Side in contemporary times, Lush Life follows the human consequences of a late night street crime—three young writers/actors, one too drunk to stand by himself, are coming home after a long night of drinking that followed their shifts as waiters and bartenders in the newly trendy Lower East Side nightlife. Two street hoods from a neighboring project confront the trio. One, a novice mugger, has a gun that he brandishes. One of the three steps forward and says, “Not tonight my man.” The stepping forward results in a nervous, reflexive pull of a trigger and the young man falls dead. The two muggers flee. A couple of witnesses see the aftermath and mistake what they saw for what happened, confusing the work of the police and what follows in Price’s expert, street smart, and sharp, authentic dialogue is all the knotty, traumatic, flailing away at the truth and slippery recovery of shattered lives—those shattered that night and those shattered long before only to have the night’s events and consequences represent a further kicking about of the shards. Matty Clark and Yolanda Bello are the two primary police assigned to the case. Clark, the vic’s father, Eric Cash, one of the surviving victims, and Tristan, the shooter, are the book’s main characters, though there are a slew of secondary characters who, like Yolanda, share the book’s stage and come authentically to life. As does the transitioning Lower East Side. Price is generally cited as one of our best writers of dialogue (better than David Mamet or Elmore Leonard says one commentator) and there are few false notes here. Price puts words in the mouths of his story’s people that have the signature finger prints of character and personal history all over them. This is how particular cops talk to other particular cops, and how they play witnesses and suspects, and how witnesses and suspects talk back to cops, and how particular bosses talk to those they have authority over, and how husbands and wives talk, friends and lovers, bartenders and customers, the lonely and desperate to others at the end of a troubled night. It’s as real as overheard conversation; sharp as life’s disappointments and giddy as its thrills. Yet, authenticity aside, the book is oddly unsatisfying, just true to life. Things seem fated, not decided by people’s choices. Clark’s kids are no good, at least his oldest, an upstate cop who deals drugs on the side. Eric’s life has slipped away from him and it’s only recognition of that fact that seems possible. Tristan’s went off the rails at birth. Billy Marcus, the vic’s father, and his wife are in a kind of limbo that tragedy only deepens. He becomes Clark’s unwanted partner in working the crime and she a potential romantic interest. All of this is real and, one would think, ripe for more. Instead, as one of the characters might (but doesn’t) say, it is what is and it begins and ends that way....less

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cheeseblab rated it:

04/30/08

Read in April, 2008

Ultimately overcame my misgivings (though I'll probably never forget the geographical faux pas [below]) and involved me chest-deep in the story. Not original with me to point out that Price's language is brilliant precisely in its not being exactly like we've ever heard people talk, but rather like we imagine they ought to talk in hard-boiled cop stories but never quite do (except, I guess, in episodes of The Wire written by Price.

***
A pre-review, based on 40-odd p...more Ultimately overcame my misgivings (though I'll probably never forget the geographical faux pas [below]) and involved me chest-deep in the story. Not original with me to point out that Price's language is brilliant precisely in its not being exactly like we've ever heard people talk, but rather like we imagine they ought to talk in hard-boiled cop stories but never quite do (except, I guess, in episodes of The Wire written by Price.

***
A pre-review, based on 40-odd pages . . .

OK, look: I didn't get my Hagstrom street atlas out to do a gotcha. I got it out because the opening scene has such an exact sense of (Lower East Side) place that I wanted to follow along on streets with which I am vaguely but not intimately familiar.

But then we have a shooting, and we're told that (1) it takes place in front of 27 Eldridge Street, (2) the shooter immediately runs east on Delancey, and (3) the closest subway stop in that direction is at Delancey and Chrystie.

All right, how much does geographical precision matter in a work of fiction. Not much, unless . . . Unless, e.g., you've been making a big deal in interviews of how intimately you've come to know the Lower East Side. Unless, e.g., every rave review raves about the exact sense of (Lower East Side) place. In which case, get the fucking geography right, yo!

To wit: 27 Eldridge is at the intersection of Canal Street, 4 blocks south of Delancey. Now 127 Eldridge, if such an address exists, would be near Broome Street, within a block of Delancey, making it reasonable that a shooter at that location could then be seen running east on Delancey. But we have a bigger problem.

East, the shooter is said to have run. East: we're told this at least twice (once when the witness changes his story and has the shooter running south instead). And this, the cop knows, would take him to the BMT subway stop at Delancey and Chrystie. Well, yeah, if he ran almost all the way around the globe. 'Cause Chrystie is two blocks west of Eldridge.

Now, would I have known this had I not had my Hagstrom's handy? No. But would most of the quarter of a million residents of the Lower East Side, many of whom read novels, have recognized the error without access to a reference? No doubt. And are there really a quarter of a million people on the Lower East Side? I have no idea, and I haven't bothered to do the simple Wikipedia check that would confirm or disprove the estimate. 'Cause I'm not seeking good reviews on the basis of my intimate knowledge of the LES. And while it would have been easy to make that check, it's even easier to check Hagstrom or Mapquest and see that Price's geography is fucked up. Now maybe as I read further it will become a key plot point that this particular cop is a geographical fuck-up. But unless so, I gotta say: Richard, ain't no reason for this. It may be a great novel in the end, but I'm not gonna be the only one saying, "Yeah, but did you notice the screaming rearrangement of the subway system and the street grid. The fuck was that about?"...less

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Elizabeth rated it:

(review of isbn 0000000000)

05/30/08

Read in May, 2008

I found this book impressive but annoying. Price works hard—like the best of journalists figuring out exactly the texture of life inside the precinct, inside the coke-y high-end fab hip restaurant, even among the “ghetto kids” (*—more on this in a sec) for this Loisaida panorama circa 2004. So good for him—go write Random Family (Adrienne Nicole leBlanc on the South Bronx, ten million times better cause the whole thing is real, nonfiction.) Anyway that’s just a quibble, because for a...more I found this book impressive but annoying. Price works hard—like the best of journalists figuring out exactly the texture of life inside the precinct, inside the coke-y high-end fab hip restaurant, even among the “ghetto kids” (*—more on this in a sec) for this Loisaida panorama circa 2004. So good for him—go write Random Family (Adrienne Nicole leBlanc on the South Bronx, ten million times better cause the whole thing is real, nonfiction.) Anyway that’s just a quibble, because for a novelist, Price did his homework and then some. This comes through especially in the language. It is, 80 percent of the time, taut and inventive, bled of extra words. But the fact that the other twenty percent of the time he writes with canned wording and clichéd turns of phrase suggests to me he has no ear but, rather, repeats the fresh lingo expertly. However, when at a loss (“left to his own devices,” as a canned phrase-ster would have it), he comes up with things he probably heard on TV. I am, thus, convinced Price has no imagination, though I haven’t read his other work. Maybe he just lost his imagination for this book. That accounts for the completely formula plot and, as to the above (*), awful character portrayals of the kids “in the ‘hood.” The villain, for instance, a rough named Tristan, has no real motive for killing except being dumb and egotistical. That said, I thought Price did a good job of drawing the other characters—Eric, the loser/restaurant-worker/hipster; Marty, the cop; Billy, the victim’s father. So he can do white men, and go for it, I got involved in their pathologies. But the portrayal of the Projects kids was insulting to me and to them, me because it insulted my intelligence and them because they were stereotypes who, in spite of an attempt (“motivation for killing is character’s lifelong sense of worthlessness”), had no depth or reality. In other words they were like Jaws, or Freddy—crazy, maniacal, villains killing for no reason you or I would be able to identify with aka an insane or animal-like consciousness. This was not Dick and Perry (In Cold Blood). Anyway the book is a good example of how to use research in fiction—the grittiness of the setting comes through because it’s original and detailed—you imagine Price there with his notepad every time someone steps into the elevator at the Precinct house or in the Projects—and you never feel things are being defined for you pedantically. Tom Wolfe would be proud, for better or for worse. ...less

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Elizabeth rated it:

05/30/08

Read in May, 2008

I found this book impressive but annoying. Price works hard—like the best of journalists figuring out exactly the texture of life inside the precinct, inside the coke-y high-end fab hip restaurant, even among the “ghetto kids” (*—more on this in a sec) for this Loisaida panorama circa 2004. So good for him—go write Random Family (Adrienne Nicole leBlanc on the South Bronx, ten million times better cause the whole thing is real, nonfiction.) Anyway that’s just a quibble, because for a...more I found this book impressive but annoying. Price works hard—like the best of journalists figuring out exactly the texture of life inside the precinct, inside the coke-y high-end fab hip restaurant, even among the “ghetto kids” (*—more on this in a sec) for this Loisaida panorama circa 2004. So good for him—go write Random Family (Adrienne Nicole leBlanc on the South Bronx, ten million times better cause the whole thing is real, nonfiction.) Anyway that’s just a quibble, because for a novelist, Price did his homework and then some. This comes through especially in the language. It is, 80 percent of the time, taut and inventive, bled of extra words. But the fact that the other twenty percent of the time he writes with canned wording and clichéd turns of phrase suggests to me he has no ear but, rather, repeats the fresh lingo expertly. However, when at a loss (“left to his own devices,” as a canned phrase-ster would have it), he comes up with things he probably heard on TV. I am, thus, convinced Price has no imagination, though I haven’t read his other work. Maybe he just lost his imagination for this book. That accounts for the completely formula plot and, as to the above (*), awful character portrayals of the kids “in the ‘hood.” The villain, for instance, a rough named Tristan, has no real motive for killing except being dumb and egotistical. That said, I thought Price did a good job of drawing the other characters—Eric, the loser/restaurant-worker/hipster; Marty, the cop; Billy, the victim’s father. So he can do white men, and go for it, I got involved in their pathologies. But the portrayal of the Projects kids was insulting to me and to them, me because it insulted my intelligence and them because they were stereotypes who, in spite of an attempt (“motivation for killing is character’s lifelong sense of worthlessness”), had no depth or reality. In other words they were like Jaws, or Freddy—crazy, maniacal, villains killing for no reason you or I would be able to identify with aka an insane or animal-like consciousness. This was not Dick and Perry (In Cold Blood). Anyway the book is a good example of how to use research in fiction—the grittiness of the setting comes through because it’s original and detailed—you imagine Price there with his notepad every time someone steps into the elevator at the Precinct house or in the Projects—and you never feel things are being defined for you pedantically. Tom Wolfe would be proud, for better or for worse. ...less

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Brian rated it:

03/11/08

bookshelves: read-2008

Read in March, 2008

Lush Life by Richard Price is a really good book and it might even be a great book. It hits the pre-reqs one after another: the major players seem fully rounded people, the dialogue seems like words real folk might speak, the description of action and place verges on poetry, and the actual happenings are interesting, engaging, and worthy of the reader plowing forward, real world ignored, but the book has one failure that keeps on brewing since I read the last page.

With one exception the wome...more Lush Life by Richard Price is a really good book and it might even be a great book. It hits the pre-reqs one after another: the major players seem fully rounded people, the dialogue seems like words real folk might speak, the description of action and place verges on poetry, and the actual happenings are interesting, engaging, and worthy of the reader plowing forward, real world ignored, but the book has one failure that keeps on brewing since I read the last page.

With one exception the women characters are defined by the male characters interaction with their vaginas. Yolanda the police detective is the only female character who manages to avoid what seems pretty much an automatic cookie cutter characterization process.

Bree the waitress, it's all about her and Eric the restaurant manager's penis.

Alessandra the ex-girlfriend, it's all about her and Eric's penis.

Minette, second wife of the victim's grieving father, it's all about her and potentially Matty the police detective's penis.

And Sarah the waitress, it's all about her seven dwarves thigh tattoo and Matty and Ike the victim and Eric and their penises.

Not to forget the nameless waitress who cries whenever Matty is banging her in the alleyway, the ex-wife of Billy the grieving husband who appears long enough for a reunion tumble in a hotel room, and to top it all off, Ike's fuck buddy who rules Ike's wake with her brazen podium delivered description of his bed technique.

Considering the estimable chops Price exhibits all over the novel the lack of a female character or characters to stand up well defined as the dudes is just weird. It’s like someone made cinnamon rolls, and damn they’re tasty, but still, the baker neglected to include the cinnamon swirls.

Maybe the oversight is ok. Price is considered literary. He’s not genre like Elmore Leonard or William Gibson, who pretty much do the same high stakes low morals tour through the urban landscape, but manage to cast female characters the equal if not the superior of their male peers in terms of definition and presence. Maybe that’s what keeps you hemmed into the genre category. Leonard and Gibson just have to make their ladies all about dick and then they’ll earn similar fawning drooling accolades....less

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Mike rated it:

03/27/08

bookshelves: fiction

Read in March, 2008

Richard Price’s novel Lush Life is a messy brawl of a crime story; diffuse, overlong, ambiguous and vexing, the book is, in short, a perfect fictional mirror for contemporary New York City. Price’s story deals with the fallout of a random murder on the Lower East Side: Two young black men from the nearby projects attempt a stickup of three barhopping hipsters, which goes awry when one of the victims resists in a burst of misplaced bravado. The ensuing investigation blows a huge hole in the l...more Richard Price’s novel Lush Life is a messy brawl of a crime story; diffuse, overlong, ambiguous and vexing, the book is, in short, a perfect fictional mirror for contemporary New York City. Price’s story deals with the fallout of a random murder on the Lower East Side: Two young black men from the nearby projects attempt a stickup of three barhopping hipsters, which goes awry when one of the victims resists in a burst of misplaced bravado. The ensuing investigation blows a huge hole in the lives of everyone involved, from cops to families to friends to assailants.

The first third of the book, dealing with the murder and its immediate aftermath, is a tight and exhilarating piece of writing. When the leads fizzle and the investigation stalls, however, the narrative loses some of its momentum as police, witnesses and suspects settle in for an enervating waiting game. Price is a canny and observant writer — his dialogue snaps and snarls with the profane rhythms of everyday speech — and he has a pitiless sense of social geography. One sequence in particular, a depiction of a vigil organized by the dead boy’s friend, is such a cruelly accurate portrayal of the fatuousness of the young bohemians invading the neighborhood that one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cringe. Price, whose most recent busman’s holiday was scriptwriting for The Wire, has a nose for the inner workings of urban life: fiction verité at its finest.

What makes Lush Life so potent a read, despite its flaws, is that it upends the tidy certainties of most crime fiction, substituting a more real and jaggedly uncertain narrative. The cops on the case are hamstrung by bureaucratic inertia; the murdered boy’s father is deranged with grief; the survivor is unhinged by guilt and resentment; and the man who pulled the trigger is not some evil psychopath but a numb, confused kid. The book’s ending implies a nearly classical fatalism about the relentless cycling of history, personal and urban. As in life, tragedies explode and fade, lives crumble and renew, and the city moves on. From The L Magazine, March 12, 2008 ...less

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Pglusman rated it:

04/22/08

Read in April, 2008

Richard Price has been writing for a long time, back to The Wanderers in 1974. He was one of the primary writers on The Wire, IMHO the best series ever on tv. His new novel, Lush Life is set in the partially yuppifying, partially project world of the Lower East Side of NYC. The book is "about" a murder that happens when, with a gun pointed at him, a robbery victim informs the would-be robber, "Not tonight my man." A huge mistake. Most of the book is from the point of view...more Richard Price has been writing for a long time, back to The Wanderers in 1974. He was one of the primary writers on The Wire, IMHO the best series ever on tv. His new novel, Lush Life is set in the partially yuppifying, partially project world of the Lower East Side of NYC. The book is "about" a murder that happens when, with a gun pointed at him, a robbery victim informs the would-be robber, "Not tonight my man." A huge mistake. Most of the book is from the point of view of one of the cops who is trying to find the killer, and makes mistakes. But the book delves into the lives of a companion of the victim who was too traumatized to call 911 even though he had his cell phone with him, and too ashamed to admit that to the police. He is working as a manager of an upscale restaurant-bar, thinks he should be doing something else and is stealing from the tip pool. There is a Yemeni-run grocery nearby whose freezer forms a frosted image of the virgin mary and which becomes an impromptu neighborhood shrine. There is the young man, beaten by his stepfather who does the killing (no spoiler here, you know that early on) and who has a talent for impromptu rap lyrics. There is the frustrated actor, so drunk that he fell down and saved himself during the robbery, who stages an over-the-top funeral for the victim, but it is really a pageant for him to star in. And sadly, there is the father of the victim, so blown out that he cannot face the rest of his family.

What is amazing about this is that Price has affection and respect for all of these characters. He writes about them -- all highly flawed -- and gives them full credit for their humanity. He makes their fates interesting and we care about them even though we know that they have done awful things and will continue to do awful things. The book also looks at events with an off-center but not dark sense of humor so that in otherwise inappropriate places you find yourself laughing out loud.

Much as we (or I, anyway) got involved in The Wire, I got involved in this book. I highly recommend it....less

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Jeffrey rated it:

(review of isbn 0374299250)

04/18/08

bookshelves: literature, mystery, read-in-2008

Read in April, 2008

recommended to Jeffrey by: New York Times
recommends it for: People who like books

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

If you like to be emmershed in real life you will like Price's latest novel. The story is in the context of a police investigation of a murder in the Lower East Side of New York, but using that jumping off point, Price accurately presents a mixed bag of characters and nails their essences down pat. As in the Wire, where Price was a writer, the story does not flow straight ahead. It pauses, it digresses, it disolves into various character moments. It presents everyones side of the story. It sp...more If you like to be emmershed in real life you will like Price's latest novel. The story is in the context of a police investigation of a murder in the Lower East Side of New York, but using that jumping off point, Price accurately presents a mixed bag of characters and nails their essences down pat. As in the Wire, where Price was a writer, the story does not flow straight ahead. It pauses, it digresses, it disolves into various character moments. It presents everyones side of the story. It spins a web from each characters reaction to the events jumping from one viewpoint to the next, but you never feel lost or striving to understand who is talking. Its alive and you are there. It captures the flaws in each character -- and everyone is flawed in some way. From the initial witnesses who falsely accuse the wrong man to Eric, the presumed murderer who is raked over the coals in an interrogation, and you feel sympathy for him, but then he is skimming at the nightclub and holds out on the cops, to the father of the victim who goes a little nuts and blames himself for how his son acted on the night of the murder examining how he raised the boy to the cop investigating the crime, who has the hots for the murder victim's stepmother and barely knows his own two wayward sons who are called Older One and Other One. The stepsister's guilt, the killer, his criminal accomplice, an ex lover of the victim, a waitress who screwed the victim on the night of the murder. Each person finds his way onto the stage of the novel and in small snippets, and utterly convincing dialogue, Price shows their lives -- warts and all.

I am not so concerned about geography or whether Price accurately depicts the exact neighborhood. This is fiction. But dialogue is why I read books. Its what I love, and if you love dialogue you will love this book.

I was captivated, enthralled, engrossed. I read it in 48 hours 455 pages on two work days. Gulped it down finished it and said now thats a book and a half.

Thats worth 5 stars to me.

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Michael rated it:

06/20/08

Set in 2003 in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Lush Life is as street as any literary novel can be. Richard Price knows the American city, understands its inhabitants—how they look, how they sound, how they interact, how and why they hurt themselves and kill each other.

In his first novel in five years, Price leaves the fictional Dempsy, New Jersey, where Clockers, Freedomland, and Samaritan were set, for a few bleak blocks of Manhattan.

When bartender Ike Marcus is shot to death after ba...more Set in 2003 in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Lush Life is as street as any literary novel can be. Richard Price knows the American city, understands its inhabitants—how they look, how they sound, how they interact, how and why they hurt themselves and kill each other.

In his first novel in five years, Price leaves the fictional Dempsy, New Jersey, where Clockers, Freedomland, and Samaritan were set, for a few bleak blocks of Manhattan.

When bartender Ike Marcus is shot to death after barhopping with friends, NYPD Det. Matty Clark and his team first focus on restaurant manager and struggling writer Eric Cash.

“So, what do you do?” Whenever people asked him, Eric Cash used to have a dozen answers. Artist, actor, screenwriter . . . But now he’s thirty-five years old, still living on the Lower East Side, still in the restaurant business, still serving the people he wanted to be. What does Eric do? He manages. Not like Ike Marcus. Ike was young, good-looking, people liked him. Ask him what he did, he wouldn’t say tending bar. He was going places—until two street kids stepped up to him and Eric one night and pulled a gun. At least, that's Eric's version—he claims them were accosted by would-be muggers, despite eyewitnesses saying otherwise. As Matty grills Eric on the still-hazy details of the shooting, the narrative shifts back and follows the lives of the alleged teenage shooters, Tristan Acevedo and Little Dap Williams, who live in a nearby housing project.
But the plot of a Price book is nearly irrelevant.

Lush Life, like the author’s previous books, is an intense, brutally honest look at life on the street, an examination of class and race and crime and history through literary characters so fully formed they seem more real than real, more human than any human you’re likely to encounter outside a book.

Lush Life is a lushly written—not in the purple prose, flowery sense—but in the multi-layered, richly conceived, fully developed Dostoevski way.
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Mikel rated it:

06/23/08

Read in May, 2008

recommends it for: Fans of The Wire, Dostoyevsky, Scorsese, Sante

Having read Richard Price for the past few years, I have to say this is definitely at the top of his works, if not the best he's written so far. Lush Life, in much the same fashion as his last novel, Samaritan, is less concerned with the particulars or solution of the crime which opens the novel, and much more focused on the characters who inhabit this world. He generates a greater impact by drawing on the real New York inhabitants of the East Side, showing a palpable understanding of the...more

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Pete rated it:

06/28/08

Read in June, 2008

"Lush Life" takes a late night mugging turned murder, to weave together overlapping cultures on Manhattan’s lower east side: aging artists working dead end restaurant jobs, poor kids living in the projects, immigrants from various Asian countries going about their lives, and the cops working their precinct.

Author Richard Price is known for writing great dialogue, and it is indeed great. He does a few things with punctuation that nail the sound of natural speech. A character's s...more

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Jessica rated it:

05/06/08

bookshelves: here-is-new-york

Read in May, 2008

recommended to Jessica by: mom; times book review
recommends it for: young, attractive LES artistes with hell of money, who love the wire

Man, I am so over New York City. Seriously. I want to pack it all up and move to Berlin.... too bad I don't know any German.

Seriously, this place sucks.

That's about all I got out of this book: a heightened sense of dissatisfaction and frustration with my environment. As mentioned below, I never cared at all about any of the characters, and there didn't seem to be much of a point to the plot or anything that anyone did the whole time. I guess I mildly enjoyed it, in a bored kind of way. I...more

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Patrick rated it:

12/15/07

Read in December, 2007

I had high hopes for this book. I really only know Price's work from films (Clockers, Life Lessons (which is the first part of New York Stories)) and TV (The Wire), but I was looking forward to reading a book of his. I got a galley of this one (due out in March) and figured I'd give it a shot.

Lush Life follows several characters around the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the wake of a murder. The characters are well drawn and three dimensional, even some of the minor characters (I'm think...more

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Richard rated it:

(review of isbn 0374299250)

04/10/08

Read in March, 2008

Don't pick up a copy of Richard Price's "Lush Life," unless you're ready to give up your weekend. It's compulsively readable, and it's that good. It's also pretty depressing, but depressing in that, "Oh, God, that's life," way.

"Lush Life," is a police procedural that takes place over a little more than a week in the gentrified Inferno of NYC's lower east side. We meet the gentry, the old-timers, the cops, and, of course, the criminals. Nobody's clean, everybody...more

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Scott rated it:

03/26/08

Read in March, 2008

I came around to gradually regard the work of Richard Price -- surely one of America's best crime novelists if not the best -- in a very backwards fashion. Like many (well, some), I saw Spike Lee's movie adaptation of Price's Clockers years ago, and I faintly recall quick-reading the original novel without realizing quite what I had. Fast-forward to years later, with Price and several other heavy-hitters contributing to HBO's outstanding drama The Wire, which kept me captivated to the very end...more

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J. rated it:

06/10/08

Read in June, 2008

recommends it for: .. rookie cop-fic writers, recent artschool graduates

There was some hipster buzz about this, but as it stands, there wasn't much cause. Perhaps the setting, the Gentrified Lower East Side of manhattan --- where everybody spent some time at some point-- led someone to believe this was a roman à clef or something. A place to reread your own misspent youth and finally harvest some coke-encrusted meaning from post-graduate years in alphabet city tenements.... Maybe you'd been to that after-hours club, maybe you'd recognize somebody in the bo...more

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David rated it:

(review of isbn 0374299250)

03/21/08

bookshelves: read-in-2008

Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: fans of TV's "Law & Order" franchise

"Lush Life" received unprecedented exposure and extravagantly positive reviews in The New York Times. It began on March 2nd with a highly flattering portrait of the author by Charles McGrath. On March 4th, Michiko Kakutani weighed in with a glowing endorsement ("a dazzling prose movie of a novel.") Then - amazingly - a second, equally ebullient, review by Walter Kirn in the Sunday Books section on March 16th. So many column inches for just one book - somewhere the debut novel...more

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C. rated it:

05/03/08

Read in April, 2008

In the last ten years, Manhattan's Lower East Side has transformed from enormous heroin den, to artistic enclave, to playground for the young and moneyed. When a privileged young actor whose career hasn't even started yet is murdered during a mugging, all three eras of the neighborhood collide, and the police are left to sort out what happened.

This isn't exactly a mystery - you know the killer early on. You spend the book waiting for it to come together for the beleaguered police who are ass...more

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Lawrence rated it:

04/05/08

Read in March, 2008

Richard Price follows a murder investigation through a gentrifying, early 2000s Lower East Side. He nails the rootlessness and egotism of those who came to New York to be something, and he nails the tribalism and street wisdom of those who were born there and never left.
The dialogue in this book is amazing--especially considering he makes it up and doesn't research it too heavily--and it takes up probably half the book.
In this book, Price adeptly captures human reactions to extraordina...more

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