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Book Summary and Reviews of Lazarus is Dead by Richard Beard

Lazarus is Dead by Richard Beard

Lazarus is Dead

by Richard Beard

  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • Sep 2012, 272 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Brimming with wit and humor, Lazarus Is Dead transcends genres as it recounts the story of a great friendship lost and re-found.

In the gospels Jesus is described as having only one friend, and when this friend dies, Jesus does something that he does nowhere else in the Bible. He weeps. Novelist Richard Beard begins here. Mixing Biblical sources, historical detail, fascinating references to music, art, and writers as diverse as Kahlil Gibran and Norman Mailor, and abundant reserves of creative invention, Beard gives us his astonishing and amusing take on the greatest story ever told about second chances.

As children, Lazarus and Jesus were thick as thieves. But following a mysterious event, their friendship dwindled in early adulthood. One man struck out and became a flamboyant and successful businessman, the other stayed behind to learn a trade, and ultimately to find his calling in an unprecedented mix of spirituality and revolutionary zeal. Lazarus Is Dead is set during the final period in each man's life—or, to be more precise, each man's first life. Both know the end is near and, though they're loath to admit it, they long for reconciliation. For that to happen they will need to find reasons to believe in each other before time runs out.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Beard's take on Lazarus is nothing less than astonishing--and he respects the reader by taking religion and religious questions seriously." - Kirkus Reviews

This information about Lazarus is Dead was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Cathryn Conroy

Powerful and Profound! An Ingeniously Plotted Novel That Creatively Combines Fiction and Theology
Wow! This is a profound and powerful novel that is an extraordinary hybrid between fiction and theology that left me stunned (in a good way).

Deftly written by Richard Beard, this is the story of the biblical Lazarus—before, during, and after his death. The raising of Lazarus from the dead only appears in the Gospel of John where it is the seventh of Jesus's miracles, the first of which is turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana.

As Beard tells this tale, Jesus and Lazarus were born weeks apart in Bethlehem, escaped to Egypt with their families, and grew up together in Nazareth as best friends—inseparable friends. Then something happens that tears them apart and each goes his own way, Lazarus to Jerusalem and Bethany while Jesus at first remains in Nazareth and eventually begins his itinerant ministry. Lazarus lives in Bethany with his unmarried sisters, Martha and Mary. One day, just after they hear that Jesus has turned water into wine at a wedding reception, Lazarus gets sick. He brushes it off as nothing much. As Jesus performs each subsequent miracle, including walking on water and feeding the 5,000, Lazarus becomes sicker…and sicker. He eventually develops many illnesses, including scabies, dysentery, malaria, and smallpox. He stinks. Oh, does he smell of sickness and impending death! As his body disintegrates, so does his life because he cannot work or do anything without severe pain. Martha and Mary despair that Jesus, who is only a few miles away, doesn't come and heal their brother.

You probably know what happens next. Lazarus dies. Jesus does come to Bethany, but only after Lazarus has been dead for four days. And then Jesus performs his greatest miracle of all: raising Lazarus from the dead, which occurs one week and a day before he himself rises from the dead on Easter morning. Lazarus is a foreshadowing of Jesus's Resurrection.

But the novel doesn't end here. That's the middle. Beard richly imagines Lazarus's life after he was given the ultimate of second chances. Roman officials, who are threatened by Jesus's ministry, want Lazarus dead—and soon. But Lazarus manages to escape their wily plots and goes on to become one of the greatest disciples of Jesus. Some scholars think he is the mysterious and unnamed "Beloved Disciple" in the Gospel of John.

What makes the novel so special is that this fictionalized account of what Lazarus and his sisters saw, heard, discussed, and felt is interspersed with theological, historical, and biblical accounts of what was happening then. These are not set off with italics or spaced breaks; they are interspersed with the fiction. At first this was a bit disconcerting, but I quickly caught on and think this is the secret sauce that makes this novel so profound and powerful.

This is a deeply researched book. Dozens of theologians are quoted or mentioned from ancient times to modern day, including the Jewish historian Josephus and Khalil Gibran, as well as references to Lazarus by some of the world's literary giants, including Czech writer Karel ?apek, Greek writer Nikos Kazantakis, British authors Robert Graves and Thomas Hardy, Irish poet W. B. Yeats, and Americans Norman Mailer and Eugene O'Neill, among many others.

Another fun literary device is the chapter numbers. The chapters begin at No. 7 and countdown to zero when Lazarus dies. We are now in the middle of the book. Then the chapter numbers begin with zero when he is raised from the dead and continue escalating to No. 7 when the book ends.

This is an ingeniously plotted novel that tells the biblical story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead in a unique, creative, and compelling way.

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Author Information

Richard Beard

Richard Beard is the author of four novels, including The Cartoonist (Bloomsbury, 2000), and Dry Bones (Secker & Warburg, 2004). This is his first US publication. He is also the author of three works of non-fiction and the Director of the National Academy of Writing in London.

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