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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1862313.Lush_Life_A_Novel?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Lush Life: A Novel" border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51AW2nonbGL._SL160_.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1862313.Lush_Life_A_Novel?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Lush Life: A Novel</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16481.Richard_Price">Richard Price</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19918448?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars 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.
 
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/747648?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Jeffrey's review
rating:
bookshelves: literature, mystery, read-in-2008
recommended for: People who like books

** spoiler alert ** 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...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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