Lush Life

A Novel

By: Richard Price

Narrated by: Bobby Cannavale

What do you do?

Whenever people asked him, Eric Cash used to have a dozen answers: artist, actor, screenwriter....But now he's 35 years old and he's still living downtown, still in the restaurant business, working night shifts and serving the people he always wanted to be. What does Eric do? He manages. Not like Ike Marcus. Ike Marcus had what the Lower East Side wanted: he was young, good-looking, people liked him. Ask him what he did, and he wouldn't say "tend bar". He was going places, and he was going to live forever - until two street kids stepped up to him and Eric on Eldridge Street one night and pulled a gun. Ike's last words were "Not tonight, my man".

At least, that's Eric's version.

©2008 Richard Price (P)2008 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Price writes with the slightly manic desperation of someone determined to tell the absolute truth....This heightened, anxious awareness of moral and psychological complexity is one of the great accomplishments of first-rate writing." ( The New York Times Book Review)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Cannavale's "performance" is outstanding

Kirk from Pawleys Island nailed it! Bobby Cannavale has excelled at his craft in the narration of another Price work of notable acclaim.
The plot is interesting and informative without being overly "crime-novel" mundane. Price has captured a realistic image of the NYC tempo in the rapid fire switching of the story characters and scenes.
Cannavale performs the work with masterful application of Lower East side accent, street-talk and colorful emphasis of the characters personalities.
Highly recommended for those who want a view into a slice of 21st century NYC culture and are not intimidated by it.
Note to reviewers who have expressed some level of disappointment in the work: This is not a love story.

awesome!

this story took me by surprise, and it was made much more enjoyable because the reader was so dead-on with his accents. the author definitely knows real life. I will be looking for more by this author and reader. absolutely 5 stars....

A Life Of Crime Is NOT for ME

Wow ! Can't wait to see the movie. Intellectual realism shows that the cops are our mindful thugs.
Don't lie to a cop. They have heard it all.
A livid case study showing how detectives lie to criminals to uncover the incriminating truth. Three swirling points of view; cop, criminal and witness.
How crimes are solved with a little luck and a lot of professional passion. Unsurpassed. Modern, frenetic "Crime and Punishment."

Bobby Cannavale's a great narrator!

Bobby Cannavale is a terrific voice actor in several different ways (doesn't exaggerate female voices in a demeaning way; captures accents and language decently). Price's descriptions of the Lower East Side and his specific points of view on change, history, men and women, race and class, and human behavior in general make this a good read; the book has some flaws in deeper character development and could have pushed the early experimentation of withholding of information through point of view more throughout. I recommend based on acting quality, description, point of view, politics, and street geography.

There are some problems with the audio production; the volume fades and amplifies significantly from chapter to chapter, section to section.

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.