With novels like Clockers and Lush Life, Richard Price (The Whites) 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.
On a spring morning in 2008, 42-year-old Anthony Carter, an unemployed, recovering addict whose wife and stepdaughter have left him, is pulled from the rubble of a five-story East Harlem apartment building 36 hours after it collapsed with a "primordial volcanic roar." After he appears on television describing his rescue--"like something out of the Bible"--he's transformed improbably into a sought-after motivational speaker at events that include a community rally against gun violence and the funeral of a teenager killed in a street shooting.
But Anthony isn't the only person whose life has been altered irrevocably by this catastrophe. With Price's keen eye, efficiently constructed scenes, and, above all, crisp dialogue that evokes his work on TV shows that include The Wire, he follows the lives of several 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.
Lazarus Man's appeal mainly depends on Price's skill in stirring readers' sympathies for these engagingly flawed characters and portraying the world they inhabit with a gritty realism. To the extent there's any drama in the novel, it's reserved for a moment close to the end of the story, but when it appears it only provides further evidence of Price's confidence and talent. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer