Standard practice at this point is to extract the best bits of these reviews to give the impression of unanimous praise. Or in a different mood I could do quite the opposite, often from the same review. I’ve done both here, so that anyone with preconceptions can keep them intact. From a couple of the reviews I couldn’t find anything good, but then elsewhere was nothing bad.

(If I haven’t included a link the reviews are unavailable online or are behind a paywall.)

Nice

‘What we end up with is an extraordinary hybrid: a scholarly reflection and a flesh-and-blood narrative. Precisely how Beard pulls this off will take several readings. However he does it, it works. The novel is seamless; as gripping as a thriller and endlessly thought-provoking. Not only does the novel ask central questions about belief and theology, it portrays a time which feels very real and very similar to our own … Surprising, spellbinding, witty and utterly original.’ Chris Dolan, The Sunday Herald, Scotland

‘… ultimately it is the narrative voice – cultivated, wry, yet not too knowing to sustain a note of wonder – that makes this novel so compelling and strange.’ Edmund Gordon, The Sunday Times

‘… this is a thoughtful, enjoyable book.’ Simon Baker, The Spectator

‘… this clever and original book keeps the reader guessing until the death – and beyond.’ Adrian Turpin, Financial Times

‘Richard Beard’s new novel is a fascinating mixture of fiction and academic essay, a re-imagination of the life of Lazarus from youth to resurrection and beyond. Using biblical sources and other, less orthodox ones, Beard weaves a compelling portrait of first-century Israel.’ unsigned, Catholic Herald

‘… the work succeeds because, overall, Beard is to be taken seriously. He can stir emotion quickly and simply … his essayistic digressions temper the mythic luminosity of his subject, contributing to the poignancy of his imagined “biography”‘ Laurence Scott, The Times Literary Supplement

‘.. this strange, compelling and inventive book. … a challenging, thoughtful read, even for a die-hard heathen.’ Stacia Briggs, Eastern Daily Press.

‘… a thoroughly entertaining elaboration of the miraculous Lazarus’s life. Lazarus Is Dead is no ordinary novel: it is a brilliant, genre bending retelling and subversion of one of the oldest, most sensational stories in the western canon.’ Sara Keating, Sunday Business Post (Ireland)

Not nice

‘There are risks, however, in breaking the “vivid and continuous dream” of fiction, in positioning the reader outside the central story and undermining our faith in it, and here it does not pay sufficient dividends. The dialogue between different texts is dry, lacking in drama or intellectual punch …’ Tom Lee, Observer

‘Hmmm. Unconvincing, but as well made as a brick can be without straw.’ Kate Saunders, The Times

Some contradictory pairs:

Structure:

‘Lazarus is Dead is described on the jacket as ‘genre-bending’, which is accurate, since it combines literary fiction with a highly speculative form of biography-cum-history.’ Spectator

‘Beard’s tale of second chances is both a novel and, to some extent, a cultural history of the Lazarus figure. This is hardly as “genre-bending” as the publishers suggest.’ FT

Language:

‘It took me time to warm to this book with its spare prose and matter-of-fact turn of phrase…’ Eastern Daily Press

‘Beard writes with sharp clarity; short, unadorned sentences that contain an unforced, incisive wit.’ Sunday Business Post

In a hurry

One-word extracts: ‘Stimulating’ Sunday Times, ‘Impressive’ FT, ‘Beautiful’ EDP, ‘Imaginative’ Observer,’Well-made’ The Times, ‘Enjoyable’ Spectator, ‘Cinematic’ TLS, ‘Spellbinding’ Sunday Herald

Or not: ’Detached’ FT, ‘Dry’ EDP, ‘Dry’ Observer, ‘Glib,’ TLS, ‘Clogged’ Spectator, ‘Hmmm’ Times

That’s before we even get to the book blogs. I’ll come back to these, but the non-aligned critics have more space and can produce more considered writing than some of the hurried squibs in broadsheets (‘Hmmm’ is a limited critical term).

I enjoyed the thoughtful reviews of Lazarus on dovegreyreader, Just William’s Luck, The Bookbag and a full-colour illustrated piece at James Russell on the Web

The novel tells the story of how the bible-character Lazarus became ill, and his first death is at the physical centre of the book; the second half tells the story of what happens after he comes back to life.

Lazarus is Dead is not a satire, even though my appearance at the Edinburgh Book Festival is listed in the print catalogue as a Religious Spoof – ‘God won’t like what he sees.’ I’m not so sure about that, but I am sure that a re-imagined bible story is difficult to classify, and can engender a kind of panic. The default assumption is that if a modern novelist re-writes a Christian story he must be mostly against. Then the book gets read, and the question changes.  Am I a Christian?

I shall probably be asked this question again, so thought I’d try to work out an answer here on the blog. The advantage of doing it here, of course, is that I can come back and edit whenever I change my mind.

Most recently, the Sunday Herald reviewer didn’t even ask. ‘Beard is not himself a believer,’ Chris Dolan decides, ‘but he enriches the dull, simplistic debate between bishops and imams and Dawkins and co.’ I was very glad to read this, as it was part of what I wanted to do (and Dolan is excellent on the ‘point’ of the book.) However, I don’t quite believe that I’m not a believer. So what am I? The more I write the more I realise I’ve done a lot of thinking before now that might once again be relevant.

I looked this up from Dry Bones, a description of a character soon after he leaves University. His Dad is a vicar:

‘Every evening he drove home from the city in his roadster with electric everything to a kitchen with a glass kettle, and by his second year in London, eating Japanese noodles on expenses, he earned five times as much as a vicar after twenty years on apologetics and paste sandwiches. Mason Senior wrestled with the divine secrets of existence. Tom Mason Junior bought from the bottom and sold at the top. Thine is the glory, Tom. Our Dad still had his uses: an Anglican vicar in the family could be good value, especially at dinner parties with Bachelors of Arts and Sciences, where not one highly paid graduate under the age of forty had progressed much further than not believing in god.’

This is what I believed some time ago (Dry Bones came out in 2004) and is what I believe now. Everyone should get to the stage of not believing in god. That’s the easy part, and also not the end of it.

Introduction

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I used to go on yearly camping trips with a friend of mine called Drew. We’d spend a few days walking or cycling, maybe a bit of canoeing, and spend the evenings in a pub and the nights in a tent. These trips were regular but unplanned – if we both had a few days free we’d pack a couple of rucksacks with gear that was never quite up to the task and simply set off. Straight-forward and manly stuff. Until one year Drew thought there was something I ought to know.

I think it’s fair to say that initially I didn’t react to Dru’s news in a way that would have been approved by the commission for gender equality. Then gradually I came to see Dru as she is, far from the stereotypes usually associated with the transsexual story.

Becoming Drusilla is the story of how Drew became Dru, of what happened to our friendship, and our adventures in wildest Wales the first time we went camping as man and woman. Nothing went quite according to plan.

The Walk Photos

Becoming Drusilla Reading List

These aren’t all the books I read, but they’re the ones I found most helpful or illuminating.

Ames, Jonathan, Sexual Metamorphosis, Vintage, New York 2005
Ames, Jonathan, What’s Not to Love? Scribner, London, 2000
Ashley, April, The First Lady, John Blake, London, 2006
Angier, Natalie, Woman: An Intimate Geography, Anchor, New York, 2000
Bibby, Bob, Special Offa, Eye Books, London, 2004
Bloom, Amy, Normal, Bloomsbury, London, 2003
Boyd, Helen, My Husband Betty, Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York 2003
Bornstein, Kate, Gender Outlaw, Routledge, London, 1994
Cossey, Caroline, My Story, Faber and Faber, London, 1991
Califia, Pat, Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism, Cleis Press, San Francisco, 1997
Cherry-Garrard, Apsley, The Worst Journey in the World, Pimlico, London 2003 (Constable 1922)
Cowell, Roberta, Roberta Cowell’s Story, William Heinemann, London, 1954
Ensler, Eve, The Vagina Monologues, Virago, London, 2001
Ettner, Randi, Confessions of a Gender Defender, Chicago Spectrum Press, Chicago, 1996
Finney Boylan, Jennifer, She’s Not There, Broadway Books, New York, 2003
Greene, Graham, Travels with my Aunt, Penguin, 1971
Household, Geoffrey, Rogue Male, Chatto and Windus, London, 1939
John, Brian, Pembrokeshire Coast Path, Aurum Press, 2004
Jones, John B., Offa’s Dyke Path, HMSO, London 1976
Kafka, Franz, Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Penguin, London 1961
Kay, Ernie and Kathy and Mark Richards, Offa’s Dyke Path South, Aurum Press 2004
Kay, Ernie and Kathy and Mark Richards, Offa’s Dyke Path North, Aurum Press 2004
Morris, Jan, Conundrum, Faber and Faber, London, 1974
Morris, Jan, Pleasures of a Tangled Life, Arrow, London, 1990
Morris, Jan, Wales, Penguin, London 2000
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Penguin, London, 1955
Sinclair, Iain, Landor’s Tower, Granta, London, 2001
Thomas, David, Girl, Signet, London 1995
Wells, H.G., The Invisible Man, Oxford Classics, Oxford, (1897)
Wheeler, Sara, Terra Incognita, Vintage, London 1997

Manly Pursuits
or
How to Beat the Australians

Introduction

For twenty years I’ve been watching England cricket teams humiliated by the likes of the Chappell brothers, Allan Border and Steve Waugh, Australians so gritty they order their sandwiches with sand in. There wasn’t much respite in other sports: the 53rd most populated country in the world was fourth in the medals table at the Athens Olympics, Lleyton Hewitt is a Wimbledon champion, and the Socceroos beat England 3-1 at Upton Park in 2003. And supposedly, or so the team-sheets kept telling me, these losing Englishmen were representing the nation.

In the summer of 2005, I decided I didn’t need to be represented because I, in fact, am me, so I set out for Australia on the well established priniciple that if you want something doing . . .

And took it upon myself to beat the Australians, single-handedly, in any sport they cared to mention. I ended up at the heart of the problem, as I saw it, in the Sydney suburb of Manly, where I took on Australians at lawn bowls, shooting, golf, swimming, surfing, running, spectating, betting and quiz.

Not surprisingly, with the Australians fatally undermined in their heartland sporting community of Manly, England regained the Ashes. I was not awarded an MBE.