Lush Life: A Novel | 
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| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
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 and he’s 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.
In Lush Life, Richard Price tears the shiny veneer off the “new” New York to show us the hidden cracks, the underground networks of control and violence beneath the glamour. Lush Life is an Xray of the street in the age of no broken windows and “quality of life” squads, from a writer whose “tough, gritty brand of social realism . . . reads like a movie in prose” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times).
Amazon.com
Amazon Significant Seven, March 2008: No one has a better ear and eye for the American city than Richard Price, and in Lush Life, his first novel in five years, he leaves the fictional environs of Dempsy, New Jersey, where Clockers, Freedomland, and Samaritan were set, for a few crowded blocks of Manhattan's Lower East Side. There's a crime at the heart of the story, but you don't read Price for plot. Instead, you listen as he peels apart layers of class and history through the way his characters talk to each other: hipster bartenders who tell people they're really writers, homeboys from housing projects named after the Jewish immigrants who have long left the neighborhood, and cops, cops, cops, circling the streets looking for a collar, disappearing into their cases as their own lives go to ruin. --Tom Nissley
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Customer Reviews:
• Lush But Challenging 11 May, 2008
In Lush Life, Richard Price continues to capture the patios of characters from his locales, this time the Lower East Side of Manhattan that is rapidly recreating itself. A mugging turned murder is the center of the plot and the first 1/3 of the book is a sort of questioning/interrogation. Trouble is, sometimes I need a decoder ring because I'm not hip to all the slang.
Price has the action and locations down perfectly as well as the politically incorrect themes of race, drugs, and religion.
This is a good character study of both people and places.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1UL0FO9AGP4LS
• Eventually Slightly Boring 04 May, 2008
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?
- Reviewed by customer ID: A564DZAETCNK4
• Price At His Best And Worst 11 May, 2008
Richard Price is probably my favorite author (yes, it is a difficult distinction for me to make), because of he, more than any other has the ability to capture the raw dialogue of the street, and encapsulate that into a breathing, living conversation available so readily to his reader. His storytelling ability is indisputable, from his novels-turned-movies directed by self-proclaimed autuers like Spike Lee (Clockers) to his wonderful work on probably the most under-rated television show in TV history (the wire).
In Lush Life, Mr. Price extends himself successfully beyond the gritty, urban landscapes he flexibly navigates in Clockers and The Wanderers. By having the Lower East Side as the backdrop, Mr. Price has to create characters beyond his comfort level of the cop-perp relationship that he normally does a masterful job of handling objectively. As a born and raised Brooklynite, Mr. Price's literature is New York City. His grasp for the city and the region is once again flawless in this novel, and better yet, his grasp for such a bizarre neighborhood of circumstance- the lower-east side- is exemplary.
However, Mr. Price, who is so good at not over-romanticizing in his previous novels, tends to be a little idealistic in this novel. At times, Mr. Price is guilty of over-writing and dragging sequences out long enough to make the reader slightly lose interest, and that seems to be the case several times in this book. The plot itself is interesting enough, but Price at times sways too far from his strengths as a crime writer, trying at times to hard to bring human agency to different matters (which he does when he doesn't try), that makes the story at times seem insincere and I hate to say it but at times pompous.
I would still say buy this novel, especially if your a New Yorker. It's not the quickest read ever, but it's worth it. If you haven't read Price before, you will probably love this novel. But if like me, your are a Price enthusiast, finishing the novel is like your a teacher receiving a B paper from your best student.
- Reviewed by customer ID: APWA5G0STGIK2
• Dumb 06 May, 2008
Stupid, dumb, stupid, boring, stupid, brainless, stupid, tiresome, stupid, dreary, stupid, senseless, etc., stupid, etc.
I note that other reviewers had said that they had trouble getting into the book, or worse. I should have listened to them.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2N68OZJKBQUL7
• Lush Indeed 08 May, 2008
This one of the most complete books I've read in some time. All the plots and subplots are introduced, developed, and resolved neatly. Considering the number of characters, this is no mean feat in less than 500 pages. The motivations are exposed, the actions are consistent, and the observations are acute. Very well done.
- Reviewed by customer ID: ALL087C49769B
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