Book Review: Lush Life

Lush Life by Richard Price


I have never been to the NY's Lower East Side, except for a quick dip into Chinatown, and I had no idea of the upheaval taking place there. No knowledge of the history and the current mix of cultures there. Richard Price, though, tells us all about it, immerses us in it, and makes us feel like we've been there. As I breezed through Lush Life, it was like an immersion course or a travelogue. I read in an interview that Price threw out 300 pages, and I'd have to say that I wouldn't mind seeing them.


Let's be clear, though. As much as I enjoyed the novel, it is no masterpiece. It is good, and the praise Price gets for his dialogue is well deserved, but the book does drag at times. Not that it slows down, but it's more like the author didn't know where it was going. Indeed, some of the plot developments later in the novel happen by chance, instead of something that was at least subconsciously expected.

Price does make an attempt, though, to get into the minds of his characters. It's just that it only goes so far. The emotions are on the surface, very evident. The complexities in them are slight.

These flaws don't take away from the enjoyment of the novel. Sometimes you need to read a novel that does just what Lush Life does.

Book Review: The Story of Lucy Gault

The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor

The premise of William Trevor’s The Story of Lucy Gault is compellingly tragic, and I had hoped that the overall novel would share this same sense of tragedy. When parents leave behind a child who has runaway and been injured, believing her to have been drowned, the disappear from their previous life. Their daughter is left behind to live with the servants and with the guilt of the misery she has put her parents through. Her parents also suffer with the guilt of their daughter’s death, the result of a hasty decision to leave their home because of the danger and political strife in their region of Ireland without consulting with her or helping her to understand. This state of misplaced guilt and misunderstanding, though, rules the novel. As the years then proceed, the characters are locked into this state, the parents in exile in Italy, the daughter awaiting word from them, and no one moving forward.

When change finally comes, and the widowed father returns home to find his adult daughter alive, their inability to communicate or to try to start fresh drives everyone into a state of melancholy that overtakes the remaining novel.

I am often a fan of tragedy, guilt, and melancholy, but it all takes place here without resolve. There is little progress or development. No one is awakened; there is no epiphany. These things aren’t always necessary, but the payoff for the reader comes in these sorts of changes. Even when the possibility of love enters the novel, drawn though it was with intuition and understanding, it is a dead end.

Quibble as I might with the course of events in the novel and the development of characters, what makes it all worse is the dryness of the writing. Other than the pained love of a minor character, and the growing mental illness of another, the world painted in the novel is plain and without light.

When a Novel Begins to Write Itself

I thought I was writing a simple book. Straight-forward with a single point of view, taking place over a single afternoon and evening. Yet, as I brainstormed last night about what was left to happen in the novel, it became apparent that the book wants to be more than this.

The premise off which I was writing was this: When a man learns that his neighbors are having an affair, it shakes his own idea of marriage and of himself. But after last night, maybe it’s more like this: When a couple learns of cheating neighbors, their marriage is shaken, identity is questioned, and pasts haunt the present. Something like that.

The current narration is so close to the husband, Darren (though I’m reserving the right to change it; men’s names are so difficult to choose), that we can only know the wife through his eyes. Her character, though, is begging me for a chance to rebut. She is more than he thinks she is, her troubles more complex.

While Darren’s narration is extremely close, nearly stream of consciousness with plenty of questioning and jumping from one topic to another, the wife’s (Nicole) would have to be different. It would need to be as detached in a way as she is, trying to occupy herself in the domesticity of her daily life. Her past, though, pesters her and deserves some time on the page as well. Instead of flashbacks through memory (my standard way of revealing scenes from the past), whole sections taking place in the past may be more effective.

Darren’s issues are more with the present, who he’s become, his feelings of anonymity. He is waking up to his feelings of unhappiness. Part of it, obviously, has to do with his marriage. Another part comes from his not turning out as he had hoped. There is also, for him, a large issue of morality which also comes into question after learning of this affair between neighbors.

It is to be a suburban novel, with the influence of Richard Yates, John Cheever, and John Updike, but it is also about identity and existence, with the required hints of Sartre and Camus. It is not meant to skewer suburban life, or ridicule or demean suburbanites, but it should examine how one maintains, loses, or finds identity in the anonymous suburbs. It is in this line of thinking last night that I may have also settled on a title: Another Blade of Grass. It’ll work for now.

My recent reading of William Faulkner’s Light in August has opened my eyes some to what is possible in a novel. It is not necessary to get locked into anything during the writing process, not a single point of view or a particular course of action. As I sit here now, trying to do other work, the new possibilities fill my mind and the story gets richer by the moment.

Book Review: Light In August

Light in August by William Faulkner

It is beginning to amaze me that we push exposure to the writing of William Faulkner through The Sound and the Fury or As I Lay Dying. My first real exposure (outside of “A Rose for Emily”, which is a topic for another discussion) came through As I Lay Dying. I found it dry and dreary, and not very illuminating--except for seeing the word slough in print repeatedly. Then came The Sound and the Fury, which I found much more vibrant and dramatic, but it didn’t get to me. Years later, on a second read, I liked it even more.

It wasn’t until graduate school that I learned to really like Faulkner, while reading If I Forget Thee Jerusalem: The Wild Palms. The sentences in that book went on and on, with texture and color. They were like winding vines, dark green and gripping. But it wasn’t just the sentences, it was also Faulkner’s tone, how he described the flood waters, how he let us see into Henry’s heart. I think I was the only one in that class to like the book.

Beginning with pregnant Lena on the road in search of her baby’s father, Light in August reminded me of the influence Faulkner has over Cormac McCarthy. I could see how Outer Dark came out of some of the elements of Light in August. Lena is dull and determined and I was disappointed that the narrative dropped her in favor of Joe Christmas and Rev. Hightower, or the other characters that appear, complete with generational back stories, and take over for a time. The character of Joe Christmas and his assumed mixed heritage made for a good mystery, despite despicable and violent he is. Rev. Hightower's story is considerably more sad and though there's no purposeful mystery, much about what makes him so maniacal and delusional remains unknown.

Though the novel wanders down tangents at times that felt like distractions, including a new character who takes over the novel's ending, it was addictive. The tone and setting invited immersion. I took every opportunity to read the book, coming close to picking it up while waiting at red lights.

Noting the influence of Faulkner on other writers I enjoy reading, tells me that I need to keep reading his work. Light in August is a Faulkner novel that cannot be missed.