Lush Life

A Novel

De: Richard Price

Narrado por: Bobby Cannavale

"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 always 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 on Eldridge Street 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. Lush Life is an X-ray of the street in the age of no broken windows and "quality of life" squads, from a writer whose "tough, gritty brand of social realism...reads like a movie in prose" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times).

©2008 Richard Price; (P)2008 Macmillan Audio

Fantastic book - excellent reading

This audiobook is the rare intersection of a great New York story and a contemporary gritty crime novel. Although the story would easily be successful as a plot-driven police procedural, it is lifted into a special place by its focus on characters. Those characters were given greater life by Canavale's reading. Even Canavale's slight mispronunciations are done in a true New York way (witness the way "trompe l'oeil" comes through.

This is my first Price novel, and I intend to read many more.

not bad

good, basic cop story, not as fantastic as reviews implied. No earth-shattering insights. Kind of like a long episode of The Wire. Narrator's smoker's voice is appropriate to the tone of the book, but got grating after a while.

Deep, rich work + flawless performance

If you could sum up Lush Life in three words, what would they be?

Sophisticated, intense, piercing.

What about Bobby Cannavale’s performance did you like?

Everything. He performed every character in a sprawling cast without missing a beat. Truly a spectacular performance.

Great narration by Bobby Canavale

Bobby Canavale does a great job capturing the speech characteristics of the individual characters. The street dialogue of the street kids, desperation of the father and police. Great job, look forward to more of his work.

Narrator was brilliant and made the characters come alive. Too gritty for a steady diet, but masterfully written.

The darkness of the lives in this story is painful to read about. Sad, soul-sucking lives. But the writer was amazingly graceful in his treatment; analogies are fresh and the street argot is clever and absorbing. Great writer.

listen, don't read

The reader makes this story worth listening to til the end, making accents of the variety of characters on NY's Lower East Side sound so amazingly real and effortless. To that end, the author has captured the sounds of the city and its neighborhoods, no doubt. But the story meanders, and the ending is about as anti-climactic as they come. Listen for the reader, Bobby Cannavale, not so much for the author, Richard Russo.

I love Bobby Cannavale but.....

What did you love best about Lush Life?

Bobby Cannavale. His narration of the books I've listened to are excellent. He makes any character he's reading come to life in a way that you wish you knew that person in real life!

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

I would have tried to make better distinctions between the events. Everything seemed to roll into each other and with Bobby doing ALL the characters, it got a little confusing as to who was "speaking" and what event they were at or covering.

What does Bobby Cannavale bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

He is extremely good at bringing the characters to life in each of his books. (Bobby - PLEASE PLEASE go back to being Michael Bennett !!)

If you could take any character from Lush Life out to dinner, who would it be and why?

None. I would take Bobby to dinner.

Any additional comments?

Not so much about the book other than to say that it would have been a much better listen if more distinctions had been made regarding who was speaking, where they were and what they were dealing with at the time. It just all seemed to run into each other and you couldn't tell the difference until they said "Lugo said" or "Matty commented" , etc.

Cannavale Delivers!

Price's opus given a magnificent read. New York in the oughts and the detectives in it.

Cannavale is super!

subject line says it all. he brought price's story to life. good combination. thank you

Story was beautifully told. The narration could not have been more perfect. Will think about this book for a long time.

The authors way with words made the characters so relatable and the narration was everything. Thoroughly enjoyed this book in a genre a little outside my norm. Classic literature and a must read.