Review: A Southern/Modern Oedipus tale
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 12, 2014
For those of you who have either read the Oedipus trilogy by Sophocles and loved or read and hated it, Jason Akley’s new take on the tragedy will draw you in.  Lazarus is a modern day take on Oedipus which chronicles more than three centuries with the Roman family.  While the story is admittedly long, the time it takes to read is well worth it due to the interwoven nature of the family members’ lives.Lazarus takes you from the first member of the Charters/Roman family settling in North Carolina after escaping Huguenot oppression in 1695 through the tragic suicides of their modern descendants in 2008.  Because the story is written from the perspective of many different characters it can be easy to get lost, however, this same writing style also provides the reader with a way to feel how things shift in the family as time goes on.  Akley does a great job of drawing the reader in and making them reflect not only on the relationships in the story, but also on many facets of their own lives.Lazarus by Jason Akley is well worth the read.