"Lush Life" by Richard Price (Farrar,
Straus & Giroux, ISBN 9780374299255, $26.00)
I only have one requirement when it comes to approaching urban noir fiction:
the writing has to have that sound, that little ring of authenticity. The
dialogue should be believable. Even better if the descriptive prose and the
characters' interior monologues somehow mirror the sound of the speech.
Richard Price's novel, "Lush Life," is a case study in the sound of urban
language, propelled by a compelling and complex narrative in which the
characters struggle to find out what happened in a haze of unreliable human
perception.
New York cops Matty and Yolanda are the sleuths. What they have to nail down
is who shot the bartender when he and his two drunk compadres were walking
up the street. A bunch of other people saw parts of it, but nothing adds up
on the night when the shooting takes place.
The first culprit, though, is one of the compadres, Eric Cash, who can't
remember many of the details. Other witnesses weigh in with stories that
contradict Cash's version, so Matty and Yolanda bring him in for
questioning. What follows is a virtuoso piece of writing as the cops try to
tease the truth out of Cash.
There's only one problem, however. The cops are human, Cash is human, the
other witnesses are human, and no one can really see what's happening.
That's what "Lush Life" is ultimately about: searching for what's valuable
and real amid the confusion of human perception.
Review by
Todd Robins, March
6, 2008
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