Review- Aleksander Hemon's, The Lazarus Project

For some time Sociologists have been discussing the late maturity phenomenon of Generation X’ers and those coming after. And really it shouldn’t even take academics to point it out. I am 36 and while married (although its true, even I am not technically married), I own next to nothing, have no children and only a spotty career as a writer. It should come as no surprise then that we should start to see married thirty-something’s star in the all too familiar, “coming of age novel.”
Aleksander Hemon’s latest, The Lazarus Project, while accomplishing much more, certainly is also a coming of age story. The novel presents Brik, an Eastern European transplant in America married to an American brain surgeon. (Of all things. An oft repeated detail that never quite finds its way into the story. It is a perfect example of Chekov’s loaded gun on the stage that is never fired.)
Brik is determined to write an account of a Jewish immigrant murdered by the Chicago Chief of police in the early 1900’s on account of his supposed Anarchist activities. In order to research his story, Brik returns to his homeland of Sarajevo and along the way learns much more about himself than Lazarus, the star of his story. Accompanying him on this journey is Rora, a photographer who unlike Brik was unable to escape Sarajevo before the war and is constantly regaling Brik with accounts of gangsters, vigilante soldiers, war stories and much, much more.
The novel is somewhat novel (sorry) in that it presents Brik’s account in alternating chapters with Lazarus’s story in between. Personally, I found the Lazarus chapters far more interesting and engaging. Lazarus is in America in a time when foreigners are reviled and constantly under threat of being labeled anarchists (think the ludicrous persecution of the Japanese in WW 2, the Red scare of the 40’s and 50’s and America’s latest fling into xenophobia, the Muslims.).
Lazarus is struggling to barely get by in a country that his sister and him came to for a better life, only to find more of the same. This propels Lazarus into a quasi-anarchist state that is contrasted by his sister Olga’s resolute acceptance of the ugliness of Jewish life. During these chapters, on a historical level, the background provided about Chicago at the turn of the century is fascinating. And Olga’s relationship with Lazarus’s friend was my favorite element of the novel and I am sorry to say the only part the felt completely true.
Brik’s story is interesting and yet at the same time, I was unable to identify with his overall attitude. He is always asking Rora questions that Rora (and everyone they meet along the journey) considers foolish and superfluous. I imagine this succeeds in contrasting a survivor’s mentality with the inquisitive nature of a non-participant’s novel interest. But it is disturbing that Brik seems to not understand the critical difference between him and everyone he meets in his homeland that had to live through the war that he escaped.
In the end, I would recommend the novel although, the resolution that both Brik and Lazarus find felt altogether unsatisfying and somehow rang incomplete.