Adult Book of the Month
Lush
Life by Richard Price
Published by Bloomsbury in 2008
At 4 am, after a night of bar-hopping on the Lower East
Side of Manhattan, Eric Cash, a wannabe actor, and a bartender named Ike
are held up by two dark-skinned youths with a gun. Rather than fork over
his wallet, Ike steps towards the thug with the.22 and intones: "Not
tonight, my man.".
The bartender is shot fatally through the heart, and the muggers hightail
it back to the projects. NYPD Detective Matty Clark is at the center of
the investigation. With Eric's account of the crime containing some glaring
inconsistencies and two eyewitnesses failing to verify the presence of
any muggers, Eric becomes the cops' prime suspect. Lush Life goes into
the lives of all those affected by this crime and the investigation that
follows and tells the story from the different perspectives of Eric, Detective
Clark, Ike's grieving father, and Tristan – one of the muggers.
Lush Life is a tale of two Lower East Sides: one a high-priced
bohemia, the other a home to hardship. With its perfect dialogue, attention
to detail and vivid characters, Lush Life is much more than just another
police procedural novel.
‘Price's latest reminds readers why
he's one of the masters of American urban crime fiction.’ Publishers
Weekly
‘ No matter how routinely and highly praised
it may be, Price's ear for dialogue, his ability to capture and reproduce
the rhythm, tone, and evanescent vocabulary of urban life, cannot be overpraised:
Price is our best, one of the best writers of dialogue in the history
of American literature.’ Michael Chabon The New York Review
of Books.
‘Richard Price is the greatest writer
of dialogue, living or dead, this country has ever produced. Wry, profane,
hilarious, and tragic, sometimes in a single line, Lush Life is his masterwork.
I doubt anyone will write a novel this good for a long, long time.’
Dennis Lehane
’A visceral, heart-thumping portrait of New York City and some of its residents, complete with soundtrack, immortalized in this dazzling prose movie of a novel.’ Michiko Kakutani The New York Times.
Richard Price grew up in the Bronx in New York. He has
received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts
and Letters and shared a 2007 Edgar® Award as a cowriter of HBO’s
mini-series The Wire.
