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 Review
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:
• Another Keeper! 30 November, 2008
Yes, this is a crime novel and the principal murder is shattering but it's also just one ingredient in a tragic stew of cops, thugs, and other walking wounded. The chief investigators find themselves hopelessly entangled in the lives of the victimized. A theme this author likes to explore. Price colors his characters with rich detail and creates dialogue that sings like urban poetry. This is like a literary version of the great HBO series "The Wire". He is one of the best novelists working today and I highly recommended it!
- Reviewed by customer ID: A27AF55M73RIEK
• The Ugly Of The City 29 December, 2008
The author of "Clockers" and "Samaritan" has hit the ugly, dirty, life-filled streets of New York again with a murder to solve and all the skeletons in the closet of a cast of characters, from the murder victim's father to the head detectives, Yolonda and Matty. The street jargon, street food, and street life put the surbanite into neighborhoods they'd never see except on television or the big screen. Price's dialogue never wavers; his characters exist on many levels. This is a fast-paced police procedural with heart.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2KWFYFNRO2EOJ
• Worthwhile Read Despite Loss Of Story/plot Momentum 20 November, 2008
I have always been impressed with Richard Price's novels and his ability to wow both literary critics and fans of crime fiction. _Lush Life_ starts out as strong as anything I have ever read by Price. As in the past, Price demonstrates himself as a master of dialogue and detail that have made him such a respected author in a often neglected genre. He had me hooked up until the middle of the book, all of which I read in one sitting way past when I should have gone to sleep. However, once a certain conflict is resolved (anyone who reads the book will know what I am talking about), the story seems to lose speed rapidly and devolve into a mere recitation of events rather than a well told tale.
Even though the plot seems to slow down midway through, Price is still able to use the characters and their actions as an examination of the people and history that make up life in a modern American city--or in this case a small area of a city. So, despite this not being Price's best novel, I still found it thoroughly enjoyable and would recommend it to anyone interested in reading an intelligent crime novel that is more than just a well paced page-turner.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3LVTATM6TO27B
• Disappointing, Shallow, Mean-spirited, And A Waste Of Time 19 December, 2008
This is an overblown, contrived and thin satire masquerading as social realism. I had high expectations, but I found the book predictable and self-important. Price seems to think he's wiser and more street-smart than any of his characters, but to me the book just showed how limited his vision is, whether he's looking at cops, criminals, poor young Hispanics, hipsters.... He has a good ear for voices but to make a great novel, you also need sympathetic characters and a compelling plot. This is one of those books where I felt really cheated of the time and money I had spent on it.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1TECAOBHDYNM1
• Not Easy To Set Aside 20 December, 2008
When I hear "police procedural", I think "mystery". This book is suspenseful but it is not truly a mystery, at least not in the way we usually mean. The puzzles in this book are those that most readers want in all good books, the ones that keep the pages turning. I wanted to know what the book's characters would say and do. I wanted to know who would come to a bad end and who would fare well. For me, the suspense was in these questions rather than who committed what crime. Besides, there were plenty of culpable people around.
The main characters in the novel are the accused, the detective who lands the case, the father of the slain. There are parallels in each of these, though more easily seen in the detective and the father of the dead son. Each grapples with his failure as a father. The accused deals with a different type of failure. All come across as searching for answers to the meaning of their lives. I cared about each one.
Other characters include a scrappy female detective from the projects; a group of young thugs whose fates do not seem in question; and, the step-mother of the victim. The book is populated with characters who have less stage time but who are essential to the book's complexity. Price finely draws all of them.
I will keep this book as one to study for its dialogue. Dialogue made it a pleasure to read; however, other than this and the book's characters, I liked its subtle mounting dread. A minor flaw was that it felt too long by about 100 pages. Even so, that did not slow me down. I looked forward to picking back up this story about Matty, Eric, and Ike Marcus's father whenever I had to put down the book.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2F0T3WEFUC4JK
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