Lush Life

I'm about three quarters through Richard Price's Lush Life. I like it, although I don't think it's as good as his last novel, Samaritan. That book focused mainly on the central character, Ray, and the female cop, Nerese, who was was investigating his assault. I thought both of those characters were very well drawn. By contrast, Lush Life has about six or seven main characters, plus several other supporting ones, and the book jumps around a lot. Ray was the "victim" from Samaritan, and I felt like he was a likeable, relatable guy. Eric, the equivalent "victim" in Lush Life (he's not really the victim, but is close enough, since the victim is dead and he was there when it happened) is kind of a jerk, not at all likable. There's two main cops, plus a whole bunch of other ones, including a "quality of life" squad that seems to exist mostly for comic relief. The story is engaging though, and I'm curious how it will all unfold.

Late Nights on Air

I finished Late Nights on Air last week. The last third of the book took a rather unexpected departure--four of the characters went on a 6-week hiking and canoeing trip. As much as I found myself wanting to learn about Yellowknife--the setting of the first two-thirds of the book, Elizabeth Hays' descriptions of the vast, unpopulated wilderness of the Northwestern Territories was quite beautiful. The very end of the book was a little odd, but overall I found this book to be very readable and compelling. On to Richard Price's Lush Life.

Late Nights on Air

Right now I'm reading Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay. It was all over bookstores when we were in Canada in October, and it won the Giller Prize in November (Canada's big literary prize). It took me awhile to get into it, but now I really like it. It's set in mid 1970s Yellowknife, Canada, the largest city (about 10,000) in Canada's sparsely populated Northwest Territories. The story centers on about five main characters that work in a public radio station, most of whom are transplants from more populated areas of southern Canada, such as Toronto. I like the characters, especially Gwen and Dido, two young female characters who find themselves at odds, but really have quite a bit in common. I also like the political subplot about an energy company wanting to build a gas pipeline through the area that's intensifying racial tensions between the native populations and the mostly white newcomers to the area. I'm about halfway through, and the long dark winter has just set in.

Richard Price at Politics and Prose

I saw Richard Price at Politics & Prose last night. He read from his recent book, Lush Life, which I got for my birthday, but haven't read yet. I loved his last novel, Samaritan, which Entertainment Weekly named their favorite fiction book of 2003.

The author was quite engaging, with a very New York sense of humor. Price grew up in the Bronx, and talked about how when he went upstate for college at Cornell, he intentionally emphasized his Bronx accent as an identity thing. Later, at a book signing in New York City for his first novel, a construction worker-type approached him about his accent, saying that his daughter attended a local college and spoke "better fuckin' English" than he did.

He also talked about writing, specifically the fallacy that a lot of writers fall into where they feel like they can only write about things they've personally experienced. "It's fiction! You can make it up!" he said, and following a period of screenwriting, felt more free to more exploratory in his writing.

Introduction

I decided to launch a new blog in honor of my other great love (besides popular music and my partner)--reading. For the last two and a half years I've enjoyed writing a popular music blog, http://wwadh.blogspot.com/, which will continue, but I wanted an outlet to write about books. My taste is mostly for contemporary fiction, with the occasional foray into genre fiction (science fiction, mystery, crime fiction), older fiction (including classics), or non-fiction. I intend to write about what I'm reading, what I've read, and what I want to read, as well as any author sightings (I'm lucky to live just 3 blocks from a well-known local bookstore that features a different visiting author practically every night). So without further adieu...onward.