The Bottom Line
With that kind of proclamation, I bet you’re wondering “why haven’t I heard of him?” Sadly, many novel readers haven’t read Price because his work resides within a genre many fear or consider lightweight: urban mystery/crime. But Price writes like a true blueblood reporter on the clues of what makes us human. No fat. No lies. Just the truth of how people speak and act towards each other in a place where bodies rise and fall in a city that never rests its crime and success, death and resurrection.
Pros
- 'Lush Life' feels like something you could research in old newspapers and discover is true
- Price reveals all his character’s motivations & thoughts without over-baked psychoanalysis
- Price takes on the juggernaut of NYC and its myriad of interlocking people without stereotyping
Cons
- No one person dominates the story, no one perspective for the lazy reader to follow
Description
- In a city where people come as actors or writers, it seems more stories are getting lost and real identities are diminishing.
- Eric. Ike. Matty. Yolonda. Tristan. By the end, you’ll know them.
- The story is essentially a mystery for the characters to study while the reader studies every character.
- It doesn’t feel like a metaphorical novel. It feels real.
- 'Lush Life' was first released by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in March 2008.
Guide Review - 'Lush Life' by Richard Price - Book Review
This universal uncertainty is what makes every character in Lush Life relatable and vulnerable. No promises for who will live or die. No promises for truth or justice. Matty is a detective with two sons who sell drugs. Tristan is the murderer whose stepfather beats him and has no one to listen. Yolanda connects to everyone because she’s both hard and soft, former project kid and detective partner.
Price tackles the urban jungle and urban family of New York City with empathy and charismatic insight, whether he’s acknowledging the police, stickup boys, drug dealers, shop owners, hipsters or whoever else walks the city sprawl. The city has a bruised and battered heart and it begins, fails and starts over just like the people that walk its streets. With Lush Life, my hope is that more will begin to brave our thicker swarms of humanity through the eyes of a writer like Price, who knows how to masterfully capture the collision of people and cultures within our modern day melting pot.
