businessman, buying sheep from the local farmers and reselling them at a profit to the temple, for according to strict Jewish practice, many sheep had to be sacrificed. But just about the time his former childhood friend performed his first miracle, Lazarus began to come down with a strange and mysterious illness, one that is more than merely an inconvenience that gets in the way of his sexual relationship with the prostitute Lydia and his engagement to Saloma. Beard invests this illness with a mythic quality by having Lazarus contract all of the seven major diseases of ancient Israel, and his symptoms combine those of smallpox, tuberculosis and dysentery, for his death has to be as certain as his resurrection. At first he calls upon Yanav the Healer, a local dispenser of herbs, but it soon becomes clear that Lazarus’ physical decline is too severe for Yanav to handle. Lazarus’ sister, Mary, then pleads with him to call upon Jesus, whose reputation for performing miracles is growing, but Lazarus is adamant that his former friend not be summoned. The mythic power of the story remains constant, of course, so Lazarus does in fact die, and Jesus does resurrect him, but the Romans, especially in the vicious form of Cassius, immediately begin to persecute Lazarus, feeling his resurrection has reinforced the extraordinary political power of Jesus. Throughout the narrative, Beard schools the reader in literary and artistic treatments of Lazarus to give the story a cultural and intellectual framework. Beard’s take on Lazarus is nothing less than astonishing—and he respects the reader by taking religion and religious questions seriously.
his surroundings, but it doesn’t seem likely; and the doormatlike female characters aren’t much more appealing than the males. Boilard was raised in Massachusetts and now lives in San Francisco, so the book can be read as a poison-pen letter to his former home; it’s compelling in its twisted way.
LOW PRESSURE
Brown, Sandra Grand Central Publishing (480 pp.) $26.99 | Sep. 18, 2012 978-1-4555-0155-7 A bestseller about an old homicide that once dominated the headlines brings a family back together in Brown’s thriller set in Texas, Atlanta and New York. Bellamy Lyston Price returns to Austin to see her dying father and comfort her stepmother, Olivia, in the wake of a media circus brought on by
A RIVER CLOSELY WATCHED
Boilard, Jon MacAdam/Cage (328 pp.) $24.00 | Sep. 21, 2012 978-1-59692-381-2
Boilard’s debut novel is the literary equivalent of punk rock: angry, cathartic and dripping with contempt for its characters. The story is set in western Massachusetts, which Boilard depicts as a backwater where rape, violence, racism and misogyny are the currency. The closest thing to a hero is Bobby DuBois, youngest member of an ill-fated family. Events are set in motion when Bobby’s father, Blackie, an ex-convict with a wide sadistic streak, kidnaps and tortures Raymont, a dimwitted boy who’s been suspected of a sex crime. Bobby takes pity on the boy and sets him free—which he knows will be enough to send Blackie into a murderous rage. Running to the ineffectual police force is not an option—nor apparently is escaping to Boston or one of the nearby college towns, which don’t exist at all in the narrative. So, after wrapping up some business—which includes taking revenge on the thugs who’ve attacked his pregnant girlfriend, Doreen—Bobby heads for the hills in the custody of his uncle Thaddeus. No role model himself, Thaddeus teaches Bobby to have sex with ex-strippers, eat dogs and other random roadkill and finally, to murder those who get in the way. The body count piles up as Blackie gives pursuit, joined by an even scarier excon, Ed. The conclusion offers hope that Bobby will rise above |
kirkus.com
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fiction
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1 september 2012
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