Lady Lazarus

by Andrew Foster Altschul, Andrew Altschul

This spectacular, sprawling debut novel tells the story of Calliope Bird Morath, daughter of legendary punk-rock star Brandt Morath—whose horrific suicide devastated the world—and his notorious wife, Penelope. 

The novel is narrated by both Calliope and her obsessive biographer, who follows her from her silent childhood to her first tortured, manic public statements about her father; from her highly publicized publication of a book of poetry to her mysterious disappearance; from her reappearance as the mute leader of a cultlike brigade known as The Muse to her spectacular showdown with the biographer. 

A disturbing and razor-sharp meditation on twenty-first-century celebrity culture, Lady Lazarus is also a funny and moving story about the age-old question of the nature of the self.

Genres: Fiction

576 pages, Hardcover

First published April 14, 2008

About the author

Andrew Foster Altschul is the author of the novel Lady Lazarus. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Esquire, McSweeney's, Fence, StoryQuarterly, One Story and other journals, as well as the anthologies Best New American Voices 2006 and O. Henry Prize Stories 2007. He teaches at Stanford University.

Reviews

[Emilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lit-nerd's paradise. This book is long, dense, and difficult, kind of trippy and FULL of allusions, but so so worth it - Altschul is an incredible writer and his take on society's obsession with celebrity (and celebrity death) is by turns disturbing and hilarious. And Calliope is the most compelling character I have encountered in a long time.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book from the very first moment it started. A thinly veiled "what-if" about the offspring of talented and tragic musicians, parents who started off as punk kids in small towns and got so famous it probably killed them. It satisfied the parts of me who love philosophy and academia as well as the parts of me who love to peruse the gossip sheets. Beautifully written, with one foot in real life and the other in a gorgeous, dreaming, grave-like place -- even the blatantly, unapologetically po-mo bits didn't send me into fits, like most po-mo novels tend to do (see my review of _Half Life_).

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

What if Frances Bean Cobain was some sort of bonsai-poet created and clipped into shape by Courtney Love after Kurt's suicide? This book asks that question, and answers it...sort-of. If you like PALE FIRE, Sylvia Plath, bees, Buddhism, college professorial politics, and satire, satire, satire, read it. Please. Please read it so I can talk to someone about it! I could not put it down, and read slowly so it would last longer. One of my top ten of all time. Yep. I'm throwing down that gauntlet.

[Michele · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow - an average of more than 4 stars? I don't know how (or why) I plowed all the way through this. The author is trying way too hard.

[Rebecca Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot comprehend why this book has less than 5 stars from anyone, and I will fight you on that.

[Cyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Constantly changing HOW you tell a story will not make it a good story, and will often only get in the way in the attempt. This book flops around between fake interviews, excerpts and transcripts, while the story itself stagnates in the process. I found this frustrating in "House of Leaves," but at least there the story was compelling enough that it drove you on, if only for curiosity's sake. The author here tries to force you meditate over a series of fake events, when you really just desperately want to move forward in the plot. It's a character study, lacking any enticing hooks to propel the story forward. It's naval contemplation, pure and simple.

Also, if you are going to make a book about a poet-rock star, you had better make sure the poems are positively stellar. The poems in this novel are of a juvenile execution, some impersonation of what I can only describe as a Sylvia Plath-Francis Bean love child, the prose of which are positively cringe worthy at times.

My generation, listen up: Kurt Cobain died. It sucked, but let us as a culture move forward. Do we really have to keep rehashing fictional scenarios, and writing masturbatory ruminations about how deeply it affected us? I think we can do better, I really, really do.

[Toni · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a child, Calliope Bird Morath witnessed the suicide of her father legendary punk rock star Brandt Morath. Thereafter, she lived in the shrine his mother made of his life and of the child who was his living embodiment. When Calliope grows up, she becomes a star in her own right, a poet...partly through use of the aura of fame and tragedy surrounding her, the rest through her own talent. Somewhere in this miasma of fame, fortune, memory, grief, and misery, Calliope and her self-appointed biographer go on a odyssey to find Brandt Morath whom Calliope believes is alive. It is through this journey that the real Calliope is revealed...the child lost in misery, searching through her words to pen her emotions and the loss she feels...and revealing that the children of the famed are cursed to merely repeat the sins of their parents, instead of rising above and conquering them.

A disturbing chronicle, the insets, footnotes, and asides by the narrator giving it a documentary and eerily authentic and realistic quality.


This novel is owned by the reviewer and no remuneration was involved in the writing of this review.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first part of the book was amazing, poetic and a beautiful central story. An interesting look at the unintended consequences of fame. But two thirds of the way through the book the first narrator disappears and the second narrator is an insufferable hero-worshipper who makes way too many assumptions about the protagonist for me to struggle through the rest of the story.

[Ami]

If this book is anything like his reading last night, I will probably have to quit my job and follow Andrew Altschul around the country, as though HE were Nirvana.

[Liz]

Litquake08 author.

[Martha]

So far this book is pretty fascinating, although the fake biographical references are a little disconcerting... I'll let you know how it turns out.

[Margot Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Intriguing at first, then annoying. Interesting look at fame and what super-celebrities deal with.

[Kolleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably my favorite book ever.