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    Lazarus Is Dead: A Novel
    Lazarus Is Dead: A Novel
    Lazarus Is Dead: A Novel
    Ebook271 pages5 hours

    Lazarus Is Dead: A Novel

    By Richard Beard

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    This story of Jesus’s childhood best friend is “a thrilling meta-novel” and one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of the Year (Maria Semple, author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette).
     
    Like most successful men in their early thirties, Lazarus has plans that don’t involve dying. He is busy organizing his sisters, his business, and his women. Life is mostly good until far away in Galilee, without warning, his childhood best friend, Jesus, turns water into wine. Immediately, Lazarus falls ill. And with each subsequent miracle his health deteriorates: a nasty cough develops into an alarming array of afflictions unresponsive to the usual remedies.
     
    His sisters think Jesus can help, but the two men haven’t spoken for years. Lazarus is willing to try anything to make himself well, anything, that is, except ask Jesus for help. Lazarus dies. Jesus weeps. Lazarus rises. This part we all know. But Lazarus is about to discover that returning from the dead isn’t easy at all . . .
     
    An ingeniously funny and moving novel disguised as biography, Lazarus Is Dead recounts the story of a great friendship lost and regained that unabashedly turns convention on its head. Richard Beard draws on biblical sources, historical detail, art, and contemporary literature to cast a spell that remains unbroken until the final pages of this story about second chances.
     
    “Beard’s take on Lazarus is nothing less than astonishing—and he respects the reader by taking religion and religious questions seriously.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
     
    “Thoroughly entertaining . . . a brilliant, genre-bending retelling and subversion of one of the oldest, most sensational stories in the western canon.” —Sunday Business Post (Ireland)
     
    “Clever and original . . . keeps the reader guessing until the death—and beyond.” —The Financial Times
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateSep 25, 2012
    ISBN9781609458676
    Lazarus Is Dead: A Novel
    Author

    Richard Beard

    Richard hails from Raleigh, North Carolina and lives there with his wife and three dogs. He has one stepson and works for a major I.T. corporation in Research Triangle Park. His first novel, "Gifts From The Void" is available on Amazon.com (search by title) in both Kindle and paperback formats. It will also soon be available on shashwords and for the Nook.

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    Reviews for Lazarus Is Dead

    4/5

    22 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
       Not all books have you starting conversations with friends and family, even ones you thoroughly enjoy, but this has had me sharing and chatting away because it really made me think. It counts down its chapters through the 7 main miracles in the gospel of John from Cana's 'water to wine' through to Bethany and the resurrection of Lazarus then counts up 7 chapters as the 7 days take us through to the death and resurrection of Jesus. It uses biblical quotes, religious art and documents/histories of the period to build up a real flavour of the time and cleverly extrapolates a story of Lazarus from just a few snippets. As a Christian I had no problem with the jumps and leaps, although not all were ones I found believable, because the joy of this book is that Beard gives us several questions that have you rushing off to explore more: * would Joseph have shared the information from his dream just after the birth of Jesus, where he is told to flee to Egypt, or would he have selfishly neglected to tell anyone? * how did Lazarus die? * how did Lazarus become the only person referred to as a friend of Jesus? These questions, and the answers suggested, made for intriguing and thought-provoking study. The one aspect that slightly disappointed is that from the blurb I was expecting more of the 'after the resurrection' story and felt this aspect was a little curtailed and under-explored but overall a brave step out stylistically that will have me looking out for more by Richard Beard.
    • 3/5
      Unsurprisingly, this book came to me free from a GoodReads drawing. Despite its free-ness, I'll give it my honest review below.In many ways this book fails. It's not especially dramatic. It's certainly not funny and in almost every way not even very entertaining. Yet for some ineffable reason it did drag me along to the very end. The problem is that I just can't put my finger on why. I've read more than my share of really poor books and this isn't a poorly written book. On the contrary it's very well constructed, artfully executed and professional. If I had to put forth a theory I'd say that it's most probable that I was drawn forward in this book by the vacuum of my own ignorance. The story, in a nutshell that's sure not to actually spoil anything, is a fictionalized account of the life of Lazarus. Based on the Wikipedia entry describing Lazarus the book is not too far off the historical version of the man. The real Lazarus seems to have lived a life of variety and suffering just as our fictional one did. However, since I intentionally read every book without previous research, I had no idea who this Lazarus person was. If you had asked me before to describe him the answer would have been more or less:"Lazarus...? someone from the Bible... maybe started a department store chain?"That would entirely sum it up. For every tiny event in the book the question, "Is this true or not...?" rolled through my head and it is that question, echoing through page after page that I think drew me on to the end. So now the question is, what good does any of this information do for you, the potential reader? I am tempted to suggest that readers should first acquaint themselves with this Lazarus person before diving in. However that would cause those who are susceptible to the "pull of ignorance" to be less motivated to read the book. Contrarily, I'm guessing there are those who would benefit from a bit of foreknowledge of what they're supposed to be reading about. Those who are merely interested in a good story will fit into this group. The third category of reader, those who know their bibles without the use of Wikipedia, I suspect will enjoy this book the most since it offers some potential insight into what Jesus's youth just might have been like. Just take it all with a grain of salt or two.
    • 4/5
      Lazarus raising from the dead is the last, and arguably most famous of Jesus's public miracles resulting in two of the most famous Biblical quotes: "I am the resurrection and the life" and "Jesus Wept". The thing is only John mentions Lazarus - and that was written about 100 years after the other Gospels, and the problem with John, as well all know (do we all know this? My uncle used to be a Benedictine monk. Maybe this isn't common knowledge) John is... less dependable. Beard himself says it hilariously well "Mark is considered the most factually accurate. Matthew and Luke base their accounts on Mark, while John is closer to the kind of writing known today as creative non-fiction." So yes. Creative non-fiction. Historical Fact.Whatever. Anyways. Beard's novel focus around the detail that Lazarus is described as Jesus' friend - something Jesus has few of. Why is it Lazarus' death that causes Jesus to weep? Why did the first three gospel writers omit Lazarus from their version of historical record? Beard traces the history of Jesus' friendship with Lazarus, then their more adult lives. I don't really want to get into much detail here (because you know. Spoilers) so I'm going to tell you what I think about the book.In the best possible way, I don't actually know what to make of the book. Stylistically, Beard is close to perfect, flippant but never trivial, and enough probability is added to the core of Lazarus's story to make you care about his eventual fate (or you know, one of the two options that Beard gives. Which is true? Who knows). But about the book itself I don't actually know quite what to make of it. It bounces between speculative fiction and more realistic textual analysis. It's a made up (or not) (but maybe?) (but really, too complex a debate for Goodreads) Biography of the man who was arguably Jesus' only friend.Complicated, I know.When you read it you'll understand.Lazarus is Dead is arguably the most unusual and original book I've read in a while and I read a lot of odd books. Call it speculative fiction, or whatever you want, and go get a copy when it comes out. It's very very much well worth a read. You'll probably put it down and be a little confused and fairly thoughtful about what is fiction, what is fact and the stories none of us know, but wish we did.
    • 4/5
      Rating: 4* of fiveThe Publisher Says: 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 Mailer, 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.My Review: *Europa Editions sent me an ARC for review.*Lazarus has always bothered me. In the times of my life when learning about the holey babble was a survival mechanism, I was always verschmeckeled by the point of bringing the dead guy back and then just dropping the storyline like the actor got a better part somewhere else. Okay! Cool! Back among the living, and...and...?Looks like Beard had much the same response. He did something about it. (Well, I did too, but kicking christianity to the curb wasn't Beard's response.) He imagined the story again, from the top, and made sense of it without deviating from the biblical account. He added to the biblical account, but didn't change what was there.And you know what? This is a good damn book, because it's based on a damn good story. Is it gut-bustingly, raucous-guffawingly funny? No...it's sly and witty and erudite, like a joke Voltaire would tell, not one Adam Sandler would tell. The pleasure of reading the book is in savoring, not in slurping it up.Beard's not one to waste time on explanation, though, so if you're interested in getting the maximum amount of smirk per page, read this with Wikipedia open and look up things you don't know about. I promise you Beard didn't do that, but you're reading the book where he had to think it up and write it. His is a heavier burden. You get to skate on the surface.But what a surface. Lazarus...the dead man walking...the holy zombie, my father called him to the screeching fury of my mother. Is there a better story in the bible? Well, apart from the rape and incest bits. They're all over the place, just open 'er up and start skimming. He rose from the dead! How cool is that! Beard's imagining of it is pretty cool, and very human. How many writers would think to have the resurrected guy take a bath, and smell his breath to be sure it's not stinky? Human details like this make the story one to savor.And as a teaser, pay attention to how the chapters are numbered. There's a game in there. These are sixteen well-spent dollars for you who will buy the book.

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    Lazarus Is Dead - Richard Beard

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