Lazarus Man: A Novel
“Lazarus Man turns an ancient biblical miracle into a modern story of how we can weather the worst so long as we have each other. . . . very contemporary and also utterly timeless.”
Richard Price weaves a complicated tapestry in his newest novel, shifting between several points of view, all focused around the sudden collapse of a tenement in East Harlem. The central character is Anthony Carter, a man who is buried in the rubble. The book opens by introducing him in one paragraph-long, complicated sentence:
"It was one of those nights for Anthony Carter, forty-two, two years unemployed, two years separated from his wife and stepdaughter, six months into cocaine sobriety, and recently moved into his late parents' apartment on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, when to be alone with his thoughts, alone with his losses, was not survivable, so he did what he always did—hit the streets, meaning hit the bars on Lenox, one after the other, finding this one too ghetto, that one too quiet, on and on, taking just a few sips of his drink in each one, dropping dollars and heading out for the next establishment like an 80-proof Goldilocks, thinking maybe this next place, this next random conversation would be the trigger for some kind of epiphany that would show him a new way to be, but it was all part of a routine that never led him anywhere but back to the apartment, this he knew, this he has learned over and over, but maybe-this-time is a drug, you-never-know is a drug, so out the door he went."
The suffocating hopelessness of Anthony's life is captured in the zigs and zags of that single breathless sentence. Just as the reader eagerly looks for a pause, a period, Anthony is looking for some kind of safe haven in the depressing bar scene. What he finds instead is completely unexpected. A sudden explosion buries him in dust and concrete. When he is dug out 36 hours later, it is to a new life, exactly the kind of you-never-know he'd been looking for, except in a totally unexpected form. Like the biblical Lazarus, he has been reborn, offered a second chance.
A photographer, the owner of a funeral home, and a police officer, all have their own connections to the building collapse. Their lives are touched by the catastrophe, but also by Anthony, by the miraculous hope he embodies. Anthony gives interviews and discovers to his surprise that he touches people by what he says:
"I feel like I've been given that chance and I'm not going to waste it and I am never going to take it for granted. . . . I'm not one to talk about religion but it's like God buried me under that earth, wiped my slate clean, then brought me back up to be who I never thought I could be before. . . . And all I want, all I want now, is to be worthy of that gift. . . ."
Many twists and turns follow the characters as they each search for community, a healing way forward from poverty, racism, crime, and hard times. Even Mary, the tough-as-nails skeptical cop, is moved by Anthony's words:
"It wasn't that what he had to say was so profound, original, or even provable—no, the key to his charisma, Mary realized, was in the absolute and irresistible conviction with which he delivered his message—it made you want to embrace his words and at least in that moment, try to live by them."
What Anthony gives everyone simply by surviving, by being found, is life in the midst of death, hope from hardship. Lazarus Man turns an ancient biblical miracle into a modern story of how we can weather the worst so long as we have each other. This is a story that feels very contemporary and also utterly timeless.