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Lady Lazarus (novel)Lady Lazarus is the first novel by O. Henry Award-winning writer Andrew Foster Altschul, published by Harcourt in 2008. Drawing its title from the poem of the same name by Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus also deals with themes similar to the poem, namely issues of exhibitionism and the public's hunger for tragedy and spectacle.

Described by Publishers Weekly as a "gleeful, difficult debut" with "razor-sharp cultural observations" and "some thrilling high dives", the novel's central story is that of Calliope Bird Morath, a young, renowned confessional poet "beloved to deconstructionists and culture theorists and fifteen year old girls alike."

Plot
As an adult, Calliope has become one of the best-known poets in America. But she has also been famous since birth. She is the daughter of rock stars Brandt Morath and Penny Power, whose resemblance to Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love is underscored by Brandt's suicide at the height of his fame, while his daughter was still a small child. Unlike the real-life Frances Bean Cobain, Calliope is a presumed eyewitness to her father's death, an event that traumatizes her into not speaking for several years. When she does regain her voice, it is as a poet, and ultimately as the book's co-narrator (she shares the task with a music journalist who, in a post-modernist trope, bears the same name as the author).

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