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csgiansante's review against another edition
3.0
This book felt like an exhibit at a contemporary art gallery that you kind of understand, but then keep losing the thread of what it is trying to say.
cseibs's review against another edition
2.0
The parallel narratives were equally interesting and well-told, but I found the connection between the two to be too much of a stretch at times.
ericfheiman's review against another edition
5.0
One sign of a great book is once you finish it, you know it's great, but you can't quite pinpoint exactly why. This is how I felt after I finished "The Lazarus Project". The book is a daring gambit by trying to juggle two separate narratives that are barely connected, at least on the surface. Ultimately the story doesn't resolve and that's possibly where it draws much of its power. There is an underlying, genuine melancholy to Hemon's writing—the book could be seen as a requiem for the former Yugoslavia—that draws the reader in and never lets go.
ridgewaygirl's review against another edition
5.0
Lazarus Averbuch survived a Ukrainian pogrom, but in 1908 he's shot by the Chicago Chief of Police in the entry of the Chief's home. A century later, Vladimir Brik, an immigrant from Bosnia now married and living in Chicago, becomes interested in Averbuch and decides to write about him, sending him to Eastern Europe along with an old friend from Sarajevo, a photographer who survived the war there.
It's impossible to communicate how very brilliant and well-constructed this novel is without going into far too much detail. There's a lot going on, but it's so well-juggled that each thread shines on its own, and enhances the book as a whole. There's much about the life of Eastern Europeans in Chicago along with the nascent labor movement, the war in the former Yugoslavia and how one man survived, the memory of the Jews of Moldova and Ukraine, the current state of life in those two countries, and a recent immigrant's struggles to belong to the new life he finds himself in. Aleksandar Hemon's writing style is razor-sharp and tinged with a black humor.
It's impossible to communicate how very brilliant and well-constructed this novel is without going into far too much detail. There's a lot going on, but it's so well-juggled that each thread shines on its own, and enhances the book as a whole. There's much about the life of Eastern Europeans in Chicago along with the nascent labor movement, the war in the former Yugoslavia and how one man survived, the memory of the Jews of Moldova and Ukraine, the current state of life in those two countries, and a recent immigrant's struggles to belong to the new life he finds himself in. Aleksandar Hemon's writing style is razor-sharp and tinged with a black humor.
terrypaulpearce's review against another edition
4.0
I like the way the man writes. Very thoughtful, and that good balance between character and plot. That said, no absolute fireworks for me, as I might have expected from some reviews, but a very thoughtful, worthwhile read.
lavoiture's review against another edition
3.0
Jonathan Safran Foer did it better in Everything is Illuminated.
I will clearly never be a book reviewer or someone who chooses books for the National Book Award, because I found The Lazarus Project to be tedious and over-written. Too many descriptions with words that didn't quite fit, a narrator that bored me to tears, and a story line that was just...well, boring! Plus, the whole sometimes-I'll-use-quotation-marks-and-sometimes-I-won't thing drove me insane. Why, Aleksandar Hemon? Just be consistent! I couldn't figure out the pattern. Anyway, I would prefer to give it 2.5 stars...and give up my dream of being a book critic for the NYTimes. This and Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri--both books were very well received by critics and I couldn't stand either one!
I will clearly never be a book reviewer or someone who chooses books for the National Book Award, because I found The Lazarus Project to be tedious and over-written. Too many descriptions with words that didn't quite fit, a narrator that bored me to tears, and a story line that was just...well, boring! Plus, the whole sometimes-I'll-use-quotation-marks-and-sometimes-I-won't thing drove me insane. Why, Aleksandar Hemon? Just be consistent! I couldn't figure out the pattern. Anyway, I would prefer to give it 2.5 stars...and give up my dream of being a book critic for the NYTimes. This and Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri--both books were very well received by critics and I couldn't stand either one!
dontpanic42's review against another edition
I feel like this is a book I should have liked, dealing as it does with the immigrant experience in America (one of my favorite topics). But as hard as I tried, I simply could not get interested in this novel. I made it about halfway through before finally calling it quits.
The story (as if you couldn't get the summary from anywhere else) is in short about an aspiring writer (our narrator) in the present age who gets a grant to research and write the story of Lazarus Averbuch, an immigrant who was shot and killed while trying to give a letter to a police officer in Chicago in 1908. The author travels back to Europe with an old friend, Rema, as he explores the trip an immigrant would have taken, as long as his own roots. Blah blah blah.
As it turns out, what this is really is the lame excuse for a novel that simply describes what Hemon himself went through--getting a grant to write the story, etc. And instead of getting what might be an interesting story about this immigrant in 1908, we are left to read mostly about Brik (the narrator) and his own experiences, which turn out to be very dull. In fact, Brik himself points out a number of times that he's not a good storyteller, that his friend Rema is the better storyteller--well, maybe he should have left Rema to tell this story.
The characters in the novel are underdeveloped and, more importantly, just not that interesting. And the writing itself is annoying. Hemon's language is awkward, and he often chooses words that distract rather than enlighten. At one point that stands out in my memory, he describes a man as "edentate." What's wrong with "toothless"? Some writers make great use of a broad vocabulary (see, e.g., Tom Robbins), but Hemon sounds as if he were sitting down with his thesaurus, and the effect is language that gets in the way of his storytelling.
And as a total aside, what the heck does Hemon have against using quotation marks in his dialogue? It's just another pretense among many that get in the way of enjoying this book.
The story (as if you couldn't get the summary from anywhere else) is in short about an aspiring writer (our narrator) in the present age who gets a grant to research and write the story of Lazarus Averbuch, an immigrant who was shot and killed while trying to give a letter to a police officer in Chicago in 1908. The author travels back to Europe with an old friend, Rema, as he explores the trip an immigrant would have taken, as long as his own roots. Blah blah blah.
As it turns out, what this is really is the lame excuse for a novel that simply describes what Hemon himself went through--getting a grant to write the story, etc. And instead of getting what might be an interesting story about this immigrant in 1908, we are left to read mostly about Brik (the narrator) and his own experiences, which turn out to be very dull. In fact, Brik himself points out a number of times that he's not a good storyteller, that his friend Rema is the better storyteller--well, maybe he should have left Rema to tell this story.
The characters in the novel are underdeveloped and, more importantly, just not that interesting. And the writing itself is annoying. Hemon's language is awkward, and he often chooses words that distract rather than enlighten. At one point that stands out in my memory, he describes a man as "edentate." What's wrong with "toothless"? Some writers make great use of a broad vocabulary (see, e.g., Tom Robbins), but Hemon sounds as if he were sitting down with his thesaurus, and the effect is language that gets in the way of his storytelling.
And as a total aside, what the heck does Hemon have against using quotation marks in his dialogue? It's just another pretense among many that get in the way of enjoying this book.
koreilly's review against another edition
4.0
Sometimes things don't always have to have a nice resolution. Sometimes they just end and the sudden stop leaves a nice little trail of echos. That's how I'd describe The Lazarus Project, a historical novel/memoir project that's at times, funny, sad, drunk and violent (just like those lousy immigrants am I right?).
I'm not gonna give you a synopsis because you can get that up there. I will give you my two cents on it though. It's a book about relationships between men. Not that kind, but the kind where one man admires the other and the other man clearly knows it. In the past we have an immigrant egg-packer who admires his fiery anarchist friend and in the present we have our nebbish narrator who admires his childhood friend-turned world traveling giggolo/photographer. We pick up one relationship at the beginning and the other at the end but the quiet interactions and subtle reactions to one another's bull shit is what makes the story great. Hemon has a real grip on awkward silences.
He does kind of over-describe the same shitty eastern european hotel over and over. We get it. The nineties were tough for eastern europe you don't have to keep telling us by emphasizing the cockroaches and the crime.
Still, this a good book. You should read it.
I'm not gonna give you a synopsis because you can get that up there. I will give you my two cents on it though. It's a book about relationships between men. Not that kind, but the kind where one man admires the other and the other man clearly knows it. In the past we have an immigrant egg-packer who admires his fiery anarchist friend and in the present we have our nebbish narrator who admires his childhood friend-turned world traveling giggolo/photographer. We pick up one relationship at the beginning and the other at the end but the quiet interactions and subtle reactions to one another's bull shit is what makes the story great. Hemon has a real grip on awkward silences.
He does kind of over-describe the same shitty eastern european hotel over and over. We get it. The nineties were tough for eastern europe you don't have to keep telling us by emphasizing the cockroaches and the crime.
Still, this a good book. You should read it.
kathryngreen28's review
3.0
Read for my course - I thought this was ok, I enjoyed parts of it and I understand and can appreciate the aspects of it that are relevant to my module (Global America) but overall I didn’t find it a particularly gripping book and I found the ending very anticlimactic.