Lazarus Man
A Novel
by Richard Price
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Pub Date Nov 12 2024 | Archive Date Dec 12 2024
Description
In this electrifying novel, Richard Price, the author of Clockers and a writer on The Wire, gives us razor-sharp anatomy of an ever-changing Harlem.
East Harlem, 2008. In an instant, a five-story tenement collapses into a fuming hill of rubble, pancaking the cars parked in front and coating the street with a thick layer of ash. As the city’s rescue services and media outlets respond, the surrounding neighborhood descends into chaos. At day’s end, six bodies are recovered, but many of the other tenants are missing.
In Lazarus Man, Richard Price, one of the greatest chroniclers of life in urban America, creates intertwining portraits of a group of compelling and singular characters whose lives are permanently impacted by the disaster.
Anthony Carter—whose miraculous survival, after being buried for days beneath tons of brick and stone, transforms him into a man with a message and a passionate sense of mission.
Felix Pearl—a young transplant to the city, whose photography and film work that day provokes in this previously unformed soul a sharp sense of personal destiny.
Royal Davis—owner of a failing Harlem funeral home, whose desperate trolling of the scene for potential “customers” triggers a quest to find another path in life.
And Mary Roe—a veteran city detective who, driven in part by her own family’s brutal history, becomes obsessed with finding Christopher Diaz, one of the building’s missing.
Price, the bestselling author of Lush Life and, most recently, The Whites, has created a bravura portrait of a community on the edge of disintegration. Rich with indelible characters and high drama, Lazarus Man is a riveting work of suspense and social vision by one of our major writers.
A Note From the Publisher
Richard Price is the author of several novels, including The Whites, Lush Life, Clockers, Freedomland, and Samaritan. He won a 2007 Edgar Award for his writing on the HBO series The Wire.
Advance Praise
"Half a century after launching an astonishing career that includes some of the best crime writing for books and screens, Price has let the mercy in his stories rise to the surface. On the margins, bullets still fly and drugs still flow, but the deadly alleys of Clockers and The Wire give way here to a community just trying to account for its dead and find a way forward . . . For a nation riven and terrified, Lazarus Man is the strangest of urban thrillers: a thoughtful, even peaceful story about stumbling into new life . . . Presented in two long sections with a preface and an afterword, the novel remains in relentless motion." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Gritty and compassionate . . . [Price] has an ear for streetwise dialogue and an eye for description . . . A chorus of voices enlivens every page in a kind of urban opera." —Leigh Haber, Los Angeles Times
★ "A group portrait of Harlem residents in the aftermath of a five-story tenement collapse in 2008 that mysteriously changes the life of a survivor . . . [Lazarus Man] shows off [Richard Price's] usual mastery of urban life . . . but the author is mostly in a kinder and gentler mode, affectingly capturing the complicated domestic lives that help people cope in difficult times. For all the darkness in the novel with its 9/11 overtones, there’s a sense of transcendence in the Harlem community’s shared experience and survivors’ spirit . . . An affecting novel by a literary urbanologist in top form." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
★ "Price delivers a remarkable excavation of urban angst in this story of a five-story East Harlem tenement building that collapses . . . As [Price's] vivid characters cross paths following the tragedy, they compose a searing snapshot of contemporary Harlem annotated with the author’s precise observations . . . Price once again proves he’s the bard of New York City street life." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Richard Price has long been lauded as an expert observer of urban life in the United States. Lazarus Man, a streetwise story of a small group of New Yorkers brought together unexpectedly by tragedy and the quest for redemption, will only enhance that reputation . . . With his keen eye, efficiently constructed scenes, and, above all, crisp dialogue . . . [Price] follows the lives of these world-weary characters over the course of roughly 10 days, while artfully revealing the elements of their pasts that have brought them to this singular moment.” —Harvey Freedenberg, Shelf Awareness
"Richard Price is our peerless dramatizer of the contemporary urban underbelly, reminding us that the beating heart of a city lies within the collective hearts of the denizens shuffling through their demanding lives . . . " —Booklist
"Richard Price is the greatest writer of dialogue, living or dead, this country has ever produced. Wry, profane, hilarious, and tragic, sometimes in a single line." —Dennis Lehane, author of Small Mercies
“All of Richard Price’s manifold gifts—the voices he can do, those of the street, those of the fuzz; his panoramic plotting; his kinetic prose—these things are steeped, in Lazarus Man, in a new kind of hard-won wisdom that’s very mellow and very sweet. His people not only break your heart, they hand you back the pieces so you can peer within and know yourself a little better.” —Jonathan Lethem, author of Brooklyn Crime Novel
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780374168155 |
| PRICE | $29.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 352 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Phillip D, Reviewer
Very strong characterization, fantastic dialogue, a nice plot twist toward the end. Richard Price should be treasured for his work on television (The Wire/The Night Off) and novels. This is one to savor as you explore the intersecting lives of several characters after the tragedy of a building collapse.
Kasa C, Reviewer
Richard Price writes of the City he knows. In Lush Life, it was the lower East Side, where he lived at the time. Far as I know, he now lives in Harlem. As with other authors, he sets his story pre-2016 which avoids the changes wrought in that year.
The Lazarus Man is Anthony Walker, who is extricated from the rubble of a building that leveled itself 36 hours previously. The miracle of his being found alive sets off a media frenzy, and he finds another version of himself "blessed" (it is complicated) with the ability to inspire hope in those who listen to him. I did not for one minute forget that his words were forged by Price. What makes Price such a compelling writer is his ability to create characters that jump off the page and stand in front of you. With a few phrases, he creates an entire history and the personality that has been molded by it. The entire community is here, even the victims of the building's collapse as their stories are encapsulated in a memorial, similar to the New York Times's feature on the 911 victims, "The Lives They Led."
Another area in which Prince's talent reigns is dialogue. Years ago I had the privilege of being present at a lunch with him when he recounted the first table read of his first screenplay, in which his dialogue was informed by his experience as a novelist. After reading for what seemed an eternity, Robert deNiro looked up and asked "Am I still talkin' here?" It changed how Price's approach, and his novels and screenplays reflect his snappy, cinematic repartee.
Need I say, highly highly recommended.
Stuart R, Reviewer
By far the gentlest and most soulful of Richard Price’s books, this is a quiet profile of four characters whose lives are upended by the collapse of an apartment building. It’s a book of small, intimate scenes, quiet conversations, good intentions, and full of forgiveness and grace. And the book is often so funny, but its humor is grounded in the sadness of everyday life. Not much happens in the book, yet it adds up to something so consequential. In many ways, this book has nothing to do with plot - it’s all about small revelatory moments that take their time revealing themselves.
Richard Price is so generous towards his characters, with such empathy, and this is such a sweet, beautiful novel.
Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the advance review copy.
Mitchell S, Reviewer
Richard Price was a precocious 24-year-old when his first novel, "The Wanderers," was published in 1974. The book landed just after the petroleum and beef shortages that ensued during the Ford presidency and was part of a trend of romanticizing the less complicated and arguably more innocent preceding era of the 1950s.
Most of the retro fixations of the '70s have long been forgotten. (Sha-Na-Na and Happy Days reruns, anyone?) So, it's astonishing that Price, a wunderkind depicting nostalgic themes back then, has been creating fiction based on the evolving New York City street scene for exactly half a century.
Even more surprising is the discovery that his forthcoming novel, his tenth, is by far his best. "Lazurus Man" is due for publication later this year. It continues several of the themes of his earlier work, offering nuanced portraits of everyday working people whose lives intersect in a manner that could be either entirely random or perhaps preordained, should you choose to think that way.
Set in 2008, when Manhattan has not fully recovered from the World Trade Center trauma, Price introduces his protagonist with one of those exhilarating run-on sentences that fill a page and test a reader's resolve.
The about-to-be born-again Anthony Carter ("forty-two, two years unemployed, two years separated from his wife and stepdaughter, six months into cocaine sobriety...") is a schlub who is unexpectedly transformed into a hero, only to repeat the cycle in his thoughts. He emerges miraculously from being trapped in a collapsed tenement building and goes on to find purpose in inspiring others. That premise could be treacle if provided by another writer, but that's not part of Price's recipe.
His current narrative style is mature and masterful. Whereas his earlier work occasionally suggested a faint Bruce Springsteen ethos, Price has matured confidently into Charles Dickens and Tom Wolfe territory. His characters are all fully realized and richly revealed, from the homeless man who shares profound observations to the South Asian bodega keepers, African American funeral home operators, storefront preachers, sex workers, and NYPD officers who make their way through a confined space and mostly learn to co-exist -- while pausing to reflect on what it might all be about.
"Lazurus Man" will be published to considerable acclaim in November 2024. I predict it will be regarded as one of the finest novels of this year. Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for making an advanced review copy available.
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