Customer Reviews: Read 152 more reviews...
 Warning to crime novelists September 5, 2008
Warning to crime novelists: This book is so good it might make you want to toss it all in.
 Slice (After Slice, After Slice) Of Life September 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Price's LUSH LIFE starts with a miracle: the Virgin Mary has appeared in the frost of a convenience store's glass freezer door. A line of penitent believers gathers, paying money for a chance to pray for a miracle of their own. The line is several blocks long, and it obstructs the entrance to a cafe where 34 year-old Eric Cash works. Out of fealty to his boss (an old friend), Eric and a coworker, Ike, join the line and make the Mary disappear by opening the freezer door.
Price's writing style is all about reality, all about authenticity. Not only is he a master of the click and flow of dialogue, but he also sets scenes with an inexplicable deftness, like someone simply flipping a switch that lights up a stage. Price's light is warm, encompassing, but not particularly sympathetic. It's no coincidence that his story starts with a miracle debunked, or that on the way to the miracle, Eric and Ike pass a church that has -- apparantly of its own accord -- collapsed into itself. Icons, metaphors, grand idealistic totems -- Price's novel doesn't have much respect for them. Even grander themes, larger purposes, these are all shrugged off in favor of more interesting minutia. It's hard not to be impressed by how eloquently Price illuminates every speck of grit, whether it's on the streets of the city or in the hearts of its citizens.
The story is "about" a mugging-turned-murder, but this is really just a jumping off point. Price uses this moment of accidental violence to spur a story that stretches its tentacles into all areas of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, from the bureaucratic busy-bodies that hamper justice more than they aid it, to the hood rats and gangster-wannabes who are trying to find a way to prove that their life isn't just another pointless miracle, another ruined temple. Much like The Wire (which Price has also contributed to), LUSH LIFE tries to be diplomatic with its details. No one is judged, not really, and nothing is left out.
This ends up resulting in what some might call "overkill." So anxious to provide an unadulterated slice of life, Price goes a little overboard with the details, with the facets, with the broad view. I'd use the old "forest for the trees" analogy here, except the trees in this case are so beautifully described. Still, the luxuriant attention to every speck and spot makes this slice of life novel read more like an entire pie of life. For those with big appetites, it comes highly recommended.
As real as life gets September 2, 2008
I enjoyed this book thoroughly. It succeeded as a plausible procedural, as a description of city life, and as a tragedy. Every character is utterly plausible, and nobody acts implausibly in the service of the plot at any point. It's not as exciting as a typical thriller novel, but it's amazingly vivid and real.
The Lushest August 30, 2008
Hands-down the best police procedural I've ever read. After reading just a few pages, I was a bit frustrated because I wasn't familiar with so many of the street terms, then this one was introduced: dolgier. The two characters both acted as if they understood the term, then finally one of them said: "What the f*ck is a dolgier." I felt much better.
Couldn't put it down.
Romance is mush August 25, 2008
I've been a Richard Price fan since The Wanderers. He is a master of street language, a moralist in spite of himself, and a champion of the abused, lonely, and angry. He has sometimes reached for grander themes and bigger stakes - at first glance Lush Life seems almost a genre piece - but his eye for hypocrisy and complexity is sharper than ever. His characters don't represent so much as breathe: this seems like a story about real people rather than a drama with several types. The novel still has its own milieu, but it's rooted more in place than in social group; as result it's more about there than them. That, of course, allows the characters to grow on us and grate us on their own, independent of anything that feels like authorial intent. The character that appealed most to me was Tristan, whose anger and invisibility were heartbreaking. He seemed like one of the hoppers from the fourth season of The Wire, but that was fine with me because he also had a life of his own. The obnoxious Eric Cash never weasled his way into my heart, but I grudgingly acknowledged the sinful integrity of his attempts to deal with loss, pain, and age. A more heroic protagonist wouldn't have served the novel as well. The same was true of Matty Clark, a cop in the Jimmy McNulty mold. The contrast with his partner, Yolanda, was a bit too perfect for my taste, but in a novel with so much denial and false feeling, it was nice that she was there to actually care about people and act with compassion. The novel read like a house afire - it took two days to read but it felt like one sitting. Thinking about the book afterwards, I admired the way seemingly random: it's a story about a city, a seaboard, a nation at this point in time. It's also a novel obsessed with the past. From the burned out synagogue to the Riis photos in the basement, this is a world where the past and present coexist. People haven't exactly forgotten the past since they use it to enhance their experience, but the sacred has leached from the world. The only place it lingers is in human intimacy, whether that involves grief, duty, or love.
|
