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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1862295.Lush_Life?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Lush Life" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1189374634m/1862295.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1862295.Lush_Life?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Lush Life</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16481.Richard_Price">Richard Price</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7942089?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars 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.
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/10378?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Mike's review
rating:
recommended 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 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...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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message 1: by Donald

11/21/2007 07:10PM

I gotta get me this! Price is one of my favorite writers and `The Wire' crushes the `Sopranos' like grapes. Not since the golden age of televison was there such talent as the Price/Lehane/Burns/Simon/Pelicanos writing cabal.

You got a release date on this one, Mike?

and if it is like Freedomland or Samaritan that is fine praise in my book.

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message 2: by Mike

11/21/2007 07:15PM

I'm with you about "The Wire". This comes out in March? I admit I'm a scab trolling ebay for my favorite authors, but I feel less guilty knowing that I'll buy five copies for family and friends when it officially arrives.

And ... well, I'm tempted to say this is better than his prior books. It doesn't rattle me the way my first reading of _Clockers_ did, and it's probably not as expansive in its vision as _Freedomland_, but it just seems in control--not a spare line or digression, and at 452 pages that's quite a feat.

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message 3: by brian

11/21/2007 08:45PM

the wire crushes everything and anything like grapes. yes sir.

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message 4: by Donald

11/22/2007 09:08AM

Yo, Brian. It is so cool that someone with your obvious literary sophistication `gets' `The Wire'. I have begged, prodded and cajoled my writing/reading fans to give the wire a try. Told them that I have learnt more about dialogue, character development and how real human beings would behave in ethically complex and potentially soul deadening environments watching the tube on Sundays. Brought more into my life, as a writer and as a person, than any ten novels I've read over the last few years.

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message 5: by Edan

11/22/2007 09:27AM

I love the Wire!
Mike, I have a galley of this Price book gathering dust in my living room. Perhaps I'll pick it up and give it a go? I've never read him, but your review is convincing (and suggests even that if I had read his previous novels, this one might seem familiar).
Thanks.

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message 6: by Robert

11/22/2007 02:11PM

Edan really loves the wire.
Guys- Happy Thanksgiving.

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message 7: by Donald

11/23/2007 05:26PM

Marshall, you are spot on. The long season and the leisurely pace that HBO allows the creators, lends the show its capacity to hit one as hard and as deep as novel.

Good news for the next season? McNulty is drinking again. Guess old Bodie getting wacked really upset him.

Cheers all! Happy Holiday weekend to all.

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message 8: by jeanne-marie

11/23/2007 06:49PM

Mike, I don't know you, but agree with you completely. For the first ten pages I was not completely convinced on this one, but then...it became what I wanted it to be--gorgeous language, New York as it can be, and incredible characters. Bravo on the review.

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message 9: by brian

11/24/2007 10:06PM

i think i'm going to start up a new goodreads club for fans of The Wire -- discussed will be the show along with written works by david simon and all the various crime writers of the show (pelecanos, price, etc)... whattaya think?

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message 10: by Mike

11/25/2007 05:47AM

I'm in! Start it up... (I've been curious about Laura Lippman's fiction--she's Simon's wife. And I'd love another venue to rave about how damn good Simon's two books _Homicide_ and _The Corner_ are...)

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message 11: by Donald

11/25/2007 07:16AM

I am totally in, Brian!

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