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Lazarus Is Dead (2012)

by Richard Beard(Favorite Author)

3.58 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1609450809 (ISBN13: 9781609450809)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Europa Editions

review 1: Lazarus is Dead is one weird little book. You can tell this when you open it, and it starts at chapter 7. The chapters count down to zero, which is where Lazarus is raised from the dead, and then count back up again to 7. The basic story is the one from the Bible, and the author cites Biblical evidence to explain why he told it the way he did. He also cites every piece of literature that treats the Lazarus story, and I was surprised there were so many. Then he invents wildly. When Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt, they invite their neighbors, the Lazarus family, to flee with them. The two boys are together in Egypt. They are together back in Nazareth. They did everything together, as best buddies, until Lazarus’s brother drowns, and Jesus does not save him. The book begins ... morewith the boys grown up and somewhat estranged. Lazarus follows Jesus’ career from a distance. But every time Jesus performs another miracle, Lazarus gets sicker. He has not just one disease, but seven. Is Jesus inflicting sickness on Lazarus on purpose so that he can show off? What exactly is the relationship between Jesus and Lazarus? Once he is raised from the dead, Lazarus has followers of his own, and people trying to kill him. Could Lazarus be a messiah, too? I liked the first half of the book best. There is a dry, wry wit throughout, but in the second half there is a heavier note of cynicism to the cleverness. Lazarus is world-weary and directionless. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone is using everyone else: the priests, the Romans, the traveling healer, the assassin, Lazarus’s prostitute-girlfriend. And while they are all plotting, Jesus does what Jesus does. It was fascinating to take a familiar story and look at it from a different perspective.
review 2: The story of the resurrection of Lazarus is one of the most famous of Jesus' miracles but it only appears in one gospel and is very light on detail. In this unusual novel the author explores the limits of possibility by adding into the mix other 'sources', paintings, novels, plays and poems from later centuries. He even posits a new research method, the power of imaginative reconstruction. Thus a pseudo biography of Lazarus is presented. The result is a piece of writing which pays more resemblance to a semi-dramatised historical documentary on television than to a novel in the familiar sense. It is written in a dead-pan, and apparently unemotional style, keeping distant from the subject matter, thus rendering the characters surprisingly unapproachable despite the material. Of course the whole thing is certainly tongue-in-cheek. Or so I think, to paraphrase the author. And it keeps a fascinating hold as it introduces a variety of pathways which the narrative might or might not follow. I especially like the idea that Lazarus must be wholly restored to rude vitality for the miracle to make sense, unlike most of the pictorial representations throughout the centuries where he appears to be a walking corpse (an idea explored in Alain Absire's novel 'Lazarus', strangely not referred to by Beard, who mentions almost every other author who has made use of the story). I enjoyed this novel. It exercised a firm grip with its depth of knowledge, its engaging off-beat approach and particularly because of the ideas it constantly raised. less

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