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apetruce's review against another edition
1.0
The author didn't give me any reason to care about this murder; let alone the melodrama surrounding it.
leawyo's review against another edition
3.0
Lovely audio but nothing unexpected here. If you like hardboiled NYC cop tales this may be a keeper!
funnygrl77's review against another edition
4.0
I bought this book on a whim. It's not particularly my type of genre, so after starting and stopping, I finally picked it up and hunkered down. The cast of characters were those that seem to come alive from years of watching, Hill Street Blues and Law and Order. While it took me a bit to figure out how the characters fit together, I finally relaxed to let them fully enter my mind, I saw them ... The worn down police officers and overworked detectives, kids trying to find their way in gray world, young adults living life and the parents and siblings that hung on thru gritted teeth to fight their way out of darkness and heartbreak to right the wronged world they live in. I love the bare naked emotions of humanity that can be seen in the people that we may all know in our real lives somewhere. I would highly recommend this book to those looking to escape the fluffy happy endings that we all crave and venture to a darker side that we all know exists but dare not visit in real life.
showlola's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars really (why is it that the only half star I insist on declaring is the 3.5? Maybe because it marks the difference between pretty enjoyable and very enjoyable? There is a step between those two for sure).
I listened to the audiobook recording which is narrated (to excellent effect) by Bobby Cannavale. Price's novel feels cinematic at every turn, which makes sense considering his history as a screenwriter and credits on The Wire. I was pretty riveted to the story and I think this may get me on a push to do some more crime fiction.
Still, characters (particularly female characters) were thinly drawn and I felt less than satisfied by the conclusion even though all of the threads are wrapped up pretty tidily. Maybe that's a peril of the genre, but I had a hard time recognizing the book that got such very, very high praise from critics in 2008.
Still, this was well worth my time. Maybe I should do some Elmore Leonard now?
I listened to the audiobook recording which is narrated (to excellent effect) by Bobby Cannavale. Price's novel feels cinematic at every turn, which makes sense considering his history as a screenwriter and credits on The Wire. I was pretty riveted to the story and I think this may get me on a push to do some more crime fiction.
Still, characters (particularly female characters) were thinly drawn and I felt less than satisfied by the conclusion even though all of the threads are wrapped up pretty tidily. Maybe that's a peril of the genre, but I had a hard time recognizing the book that got such very, very high praise from critics in 2008.
Still, this was well worth my time. Maybe I should do some Elmore Leonard now?
jonahbarnes's review against another edition
That was great. Are you sure this is fiction?
becasaur27's review against another edition
4.0
Good book. Great rep of genre. Great narrator. You like noir detective stories kind of in the Dick Tracy vibe? Give this a try.
jennyshank's review against another edition
4.0
http://dailycamera.com/news/2008/apr/04/living-in-the-city-richard-prices-gift-for-on-in/
Richard Price's gift for dialogue, character on display in latest urban thriller
By Jenny Shank For the Camera
Friday, April 4, 2008
Lush Life by Richard Price. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 455 pp. $26.
Richard Price's gift for creating dialogue that rings so true it sounds as though it were overheard on the street corner three minutes ago -- no matter whether he's writing the words a teenage Latino or a fortysomething Irish cop speak -- is in part why he's had so much success as a screenwriter for film and television, most recently writing for HBO's "The Wire."
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But Price's novels are so good, so packed with humor and tragedy and pulsing with city life, that it's enough to make fans of his books wish for another Hollywood writers' strike to give the man some more fiction-writing time. In his new novel, "Lush Life," Price once again demonstrates his skill at balancing literary craftsmanship with enough action and plot twists to keep the pages flying.
"Lush Life" cycles around the investigation of a murder that takes place after the bars let out one night in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Through the characters involved, Price presents the neighborhood as one in flux, where wealthy white people are moving in and opening businesses near the "unrehabbed walk-ups" and "half-dozen immortal housing projects" in the area.
Price, who grew up in the Parkside Projects in the Bronx, seems to take housing projects as his muse, and frequently features them at the center of his swirling narratives; no matter how far away his cops venture in their investigations, they often end up finding the key to the mystery in the projects near the precinct, as was the case in "Clockers," "Samaritan," and now "Lush Life."
"Lush Life" gets rolling when 35-year-old restaurant manager and failed writer and actor Eric Cash goes out drinking with a new colleague, a young man named Ike, and Ike's boorish pal one night. As they stumble out of the bars, they're confronted by two young men, one of whom pulls a gun and demands their wallets. Eric complies, but Ike says, "Not tonight, my man," and pays for it with his life. ("Suicide by mouth," a cop says when he hears of the remark.)
At least this is Eric's version of the story, but the two detectives assigned to the case -- Matty Clark, a middle-aged "shovel-jawed, sandy-haired Irisher" who has failed at parenting his two sons, and the sharp, former projects resident Yolanda Bello -- have their doubts. The reader, who has some idea who the perpetrator was, can only chew his nails while Clark and Bello let the trail run cold.
Price simultaneously introduces Tristan, a Latino teenager with a lousy home life, living with neither of his original parents and forced by his stepfather to look after his younger siblings, whom Tristan calls "the hamsters." Looking for a diversion from the stifling atmosphere of his apartment, he starts hanging around on the street with Little Dap Williams, a small time hustler who introduces him to running drugs and provides him with a gun.
Many other characters join the fray, most notably Ike's bereaved father, who struggles painfully to make it through the hours and days after his son's death. Throughout the book, Price captures moments of urban life, often finding beauty amid the grit, as in this description of a line of people waiting to see a vision of the Virgin Mary in a convenience store's refrigerated case:
"He followed the line west past the fresh ruins of the most recently collapsed synagogue, past the adjoining People's Park, until he got to the corner directly across the street from the Sana'a, the shadows cast by its tattered two-year-old GRAND OPENING pennants playing across its face."
Another of Price's singular talents is the way he cuts back and forth between the stories of multiple characters, sometimes joining them for only a paragraph or two before switching perspectives again, and he does it all with such clarity and precise detail that the reader follows along as easily as if he were watching it on a screen.
But the book, when it's written by Richard Price, is always better than the movie: His panoramic descriptions and lithe dialogue play so well in the theater of the mind that who needs TV, except to pass the time until the next Richard Price novel comes out?
Richard Price's gift for dialogue, character on display in latest urban thriller
By Jenny Shank For the Camera
Friday, April 4, 2008
Lush Life by Richard Price. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 455 pp. $26.
Richard Price's gift for creating dialogue that rings so true it sounds as though it were overheard on the street corner three minutes ago -- no matter whether he's writing the words a teenage Latino or a fortysomething Irish cop speak -- is in part why he's had so much success as a screenwriter for film and television, most recently writing for HBO's "The Wire."
Share your video, photos and news tips.
But Price's novels are so good, so packed with humor and tragedy and pulsing with city life, that it's enough to make fans of his books wish for another Hollywood writers' strike to give the man some more fiction-writing time. In his new novel, "Lush Life," Price once again demonstrates his skill at balancing literary craftsmanship with enough action and plot twists to keep the pages flying.
"Lush Life" cycles around the investigation of a murder that takes place after the bars let out one night in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Through the characters involved, Price presents the neighborhood as one in flux, where wealthy white people are moving in and opening businesses near the "unrehabbed walk-ups" and "half-dozen immortal housing projects" in the area.
Price, who grew up in the Parkside Projects in the Bronx, seems to take housing projects as his muse, and frequently features them at the center of his swirling narratives; no matter how far away his cops venture in their investigations, they often end up finding the key to the mystery in the projects near the precinct, as was the case in "Clockers," "Samaritan," and now "Lush Life."
"Lush Life" gets rolling when 35-year-old restaurant manager and failed writer and actor Eric Cash goes out drinking with a new colleague, a young man named Ike, and Ike's boorish pal one night. As they stumble out of the bars, they're confronted by two young men, one of whom pulls a gun and demands their wallets. Eric complies, but Ike says, "Not tonight, my man," and pays for it with his life. ("Suicide by mouth," a cop says when he hears of the remark.)
At least this is Eric's version of the story, but the two detectives assigned to the case -- Matty Clark, a middle-aged "shovel-jawed, sandy-haired Irisher" who has failed at parenting his two sons, and the sharp, former projects resident Yolanda Bello -- have their doubts. The reader, who has some idea who the perpetrator was, can only chew his nails while Clark and Bello let the trail run cold.
Price simultaneously introduces Tristan, a Latino teenager with a lousy home life, living with neither of his original parents and forced by his stepfather to look after his younger siblings, whom Tristan calls "the hamsters." Looking for a diversion from the stifling atmosphere of his apartment, he starts hanging around on the street with Little Dap Williams, a small time hustler who introduces him to running drugs and provides him with a gun.
Many other characters join the fray, most notably Ike's bereaved father, who struggles painfully to make it through the hours and days after his son's death. Throughout the book, Price captures moments of urban life, often finding beauty amid the grit, as in this description of a line of people waiting to see a vision of the Virgin Mary in a convenience store's refrigerated case:
"He followed the line west past the fresh ruins of the most recently collapsed synagogue, past the adjoining People's Park, until he got to the corner directly across the street from the Sana'a, the shadows cast by its tattered two-year-old GRAND OPENING pennants playing across its face."
Another of Price's singular talents is the way he cuts back and forth between the stories of multiple characters, sometimes joining them for only a paragraph or two before switching perspectives again, and he does it all with such clarity and precise detail that the reader follows along as easily as if he were watching it on a screen.
But the book, when it's written by Richard Price, is always better than the movie: His panoramic descriptions and lithe dialogue play so well in the theater of the mind that who needs TV, except to pass the time until the next Richard Price novel comes out?
lolaleviathan's review against another edition
1.0
Will someone please explain why this is considered literary fiction and not genre? Also, I didn't get the title. I liked it OK, but at no point did I feel the driving urgency I want from crime fiction, and it didn't satisfy me on a literary level to compensate.