‘An engrossing read’ Mail on Sunday
‘An atmospheric novel with the trappings of crime fiction’ Spectator
‘Both a hymn to community, and a love letter to the city’ The i paper
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.
Harlem, 2008. In an instant, a five-story tenement collapses into a fuming hill of rubble, crushing 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 neighbourhood descends into chaos. At day’s end, six bodies are recovered, and many more tenants are still missing.
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.
Powerful and gripping, Lazarus Man depicts intertwining portraits of a group of compelling characters whose lives are permanently impacted by the disaster, from one of the greatest chroniclers of life in urban America.
‘An atmospheric novel with the trappings of crime fiction’ Spectator
‘Both a hymn to community, and a love letter to the city’ The i paper
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.
Harlem, 2008. In an instant, a five-story tenement collapses into a fuming hill of rubble, crushing 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 neighbourhood descends into chaos. At day’s end, six bodies are recovered, and many more tenants are still missing.
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.
Powerful and gripping, Lazarus Man depicts intertwining portraits of a group of compelling characters whose lives are permanently impacted by the disaster, from one of the greatest chroniclers of life in urban America.
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Reviews
'Price, a writer on TV's The Wire, specialises in tales of working class New Yorkers trying to survive, and this is gritty and compelling stuff'
'An atmospheric novel with the trappings of crime fiction'
'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'
'For a nation riven and terrified, Lazarus Man is the strangest of urban thrillers: a thoughtful, even peaceful story about stumbling into new life . . . the novel remains in relentless motion'
'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'
'Both a hymn to community, and a love letter to the city'
'The Big Apple has had fewer better chroniclers than Price, and his trademark mix of deft social vignettes and vivid colloquial language makes for an engrossing read'
'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'
'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 . . .'
'An affecting novel by a literary urbanologist in top form'
'For newcomers to Price, Clockers or Lush Life may be a better entry point, but if you stick with Lazarus Man and allow the characters to settle, you'll find more warmth, cynicism and love of life - every kind of life - here than in many novels twice the size'