Lush Life

By Richard Price
Picador, $15.00, 455 pages

Clockers and The Wire writer Richard Price has penned a new novel entitled Lush Life, a modern, gritty story of the inner-city landscape. The reader may suspect the title is pure irony, since “lush” seems an odd way to describe the goings on in this book, which focuses mainly on criminals and police. The novel is set in New York City, and the book centers on the two lower-east sides of the city: one the well-to-do, and the other not-so-well-to-do. A murder of one street punk by another sets the entire plot in motion, and what ensues is a work of multidimensional proportions.

Suffice it to say that Richard Price has a great knack for dialogue-even perhaps too great a knack, given the way the dialogue almost overwhelms the work (which may be a result of his screen writing past). Much is true to life, yet this doesn’t always make for an easy read. Price has an odd writing style, and either the reader will accept his ungrammatical sentences (and I’m not referring to dialogue, where being ungrammatical is perfectly acceptable) or merely be annoyed, as was this reader. One may wonder why Price chose to depart from standard usage, as it can be distracting and doesn’t seem to confer any real benefit. In any event, the writing is visceral, and Price clearly has a great understanding of the workings of the streets. He achieves a dizzying, disjointed feel to the story that seems to echo the fragmentary nature of real life. Many readers will enjoy Lush Life, yet the work may seem a little scattered to some.

Reviewed by Aaron Stypes