Review: MODERN-DAY SOPHOCLES' OEDIPUS TRILOGY!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 1, 2014
Browsing through seven hundred plus pages of sentence fragments and errors is a laborious and tortuous effort. Yet, this compelling story spanning a period of over three centuries and its pulling magnetism abetted by its wonderful cast of characters make Lazarus by Jason Akley a satiating read.Having read The Psalmist, a biography of blues musician David Threnody which runs to over 800 pages, by the same author, it may not be too off the mark to say that Jason Akley has a way with words, and that too in plenty.At the heart of Lazarus is Sophocles’ larger-than-life classic Oedipus trilogy about a man who kills his father to marry his mother. With Missouri’s Ozark Region and New Orleans as its setting, Lazarus is not only the dark and dysfunctional tale of a family ravaged by untold troubles through four generations but it is also a story how their choices and bad decisions have ironic consequences down through the generations.Lazarus by Jason Akley is a forceful Greek tragedy relocated in the Deep South with all its disastrous consequences. It is a story of mistakes, lust, incest, murder and suicide in its ugliest forms. Not for the faint of heart, Jason Akley is fast emerging as a forceful writer.