Kenny Becker [in Ladies' Man] narrates his own story of a week-long panic that breaks out when La Donna, the woman he lives with, leaves him and forces him to share his apartment with a person he knows to be part fraud, part dreamer, a college dropout going through some premature mid-life crisis: himself. Like the untalented comedians and singers who try out for a pitiful amateur showcase in the brilliant first chapter of Ladies' Man, Becker, too, wants his place in a spotlight, to be acceptable to others and to himself….

In this book, Richard Price can do anything with words. He can shape a tightly structured novel, yet allow scenes to expand freely. Better than most writers who try to record street talk, he has a quick ear for the varieties of English spoken in New York. He gives Kenny a wit almost as sharp and...