Lush Life
by Richard Price
Buy on Amazon'So, what do you do?' Whenever people asked him, Eric Cash used to have a dozen answers. Artist, actor, screenwriter... But now he's thirty-five years old and he's still living on the Lower East Side, still in the restaurant business, still serving the people he wanted to be. What does Eric do? He manages. Not like Ike Marcus. Ike was young, good-looking, people liked him. Ask him what he did, he wouldn't say tending bar. He was going places – until two street kids stepped up to him and Eric one night and pulled a gun. At least, that's Eric's version. In Lush Life, Richard Price tears the shiny veneer off the 'new' New York to show us the hidden cracks, the underground networks of control and violence beneath the glamour.…
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"I love this book. Richard Price is famous for his detailed research and you can see that here in his descriptions of the cops and the kids. There’s a wonderful description of one kid growing up with his abusive stepfather and reaching the age that he can start to fight back. This is something I encountered a lot when I talked to boys in the inner cities. You have an abusive father or stepfather who beats them and their mothers, and then they reach the age of about 14 and they are big enough to fight back – this is a key moment in their life. Lush Life is about this character Eric Cash, who is out with a charismatic colleague from the restaurant they work in called Ike Marcus. Two street kids come up to them and pull a gun. Ike Marcus says to them: “Not tonight, my man”. He is then shot dead. The following police investigation is a narrative engine that allows you to deeply examine Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The book is very textured, pacey and has fantastically layered characters. If you compare it to great New York novels like Bonfire of the Vanities , it does touch on similar themes. There are some great scenes when the lead detective finds sweatshops and apartments overcrowded with illegal immigrants. There are great metaphors in the book for the ant-hill, termite-type living that goes on in New York."
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