Sweeping, unruly ... A gothic fable, rich with sensory description, gems of historical detail and surreal twists ... Biedermann aims for a grand European saga in the mode of The Leopard or Buddenbrooks, and at its best, the novel achieves a powerful rhyming between daily life and the demise of an epoch. At other times, world-historical events are shoveled in with heavy hands ... Overall, though, Lázár is thrillingly unburdened by conventional stylistic constraints ... Biedermann grasps at the edges of coherence, and some pieces flitter away in the wind. But he usually regains control by reining in the narrative, reinforcing core motifs and returning to the riveting scene-based storytelling that displays his true gifts.
Reading Lázár is like visiting a museum of older novels ... Outfitted with all the accoutrements of the traditional novel. Lázár has a plot (a luxury that many of the meandering autobiographical meditations of recent years have dispensed with), a cast of fractious characters, and an ambitious frame of reference ... When Biedermann is at his least flashy and most meticulously observant, he can write scenes that seethe with reality ... But these quiet intimacies are overwhelmed by fussy images that make little sense ... Reading Lázár is like running on a treadmill. There is a great deal of frantic activity, but no progress, and we end up exactly where we began.
History is the most formidable character in Lázár; the family members, evoked in brief, time-hopping chapters, are stretched very thinly across it ... To drive home the Lázárs’ fatuity, Mr. Biedermann coats them in lurid layers of shame and degradation. The scenes lurk in the shadows of these lives, poring over the characters’ sexual deviancies and psychological terrors. ... Somewhat suffocating.
Quirky and confident ... An odd literary hybrid that’s only partly descended from fable. The apparent timelessness of the manor and the dark forest around it are a form of misdirection. Lázár gradually reveals itself to be a book about the way the fortunes of a single family are entwined with the historic upheaval of the 20th century ... Captivating and vivid, creating an intriguing atmosphere of secrets, repression and furtive but robust sexuality ... Charming but uneven, the book’s chief shortcoming is that its episodic structure grows progressively less satisfying as it goes along ... A determined talent that is consciously placing itself within an ambitious literary lineage. Anyone who reads this novel will be intrigued to see what its precocious author does next.
A compelling and accessible continental melodrama ... Sounds like a baroque slog, but Biedermann writes with brevity and imbues his characters with enough life to shine through the gloom ... Biedermann admires Proust’s high society aestheticism but wants to smash it into the darkest decades of modern Europe. His novel wants it both ways, the Gestapo and the haunted forest — and he doesn’t always pull it off ... Lazar may be severe by English-speaking standards but it is deft and pleasurable too. To achieve this fabulous balancing act on a first attempt is impressive.
Bierdermann is certainly gifted, but the novel isn’t perfect. The prose can be convoluted, with topsy-turvy sentences that leave you hunting for the subject. Reading it is worth the effort; but if the author is to be hailed as ‘a truly great writer’ he will need to prove he isn’t a one-trick show horse.
This is not typical historical fare. Jamie Bulloch’s translation captures Biedermann’s distinctive fast-moving prose — a curious style that feels both measured and unrelenting — but the pace comes at a cost. Time is compressed to pressure points, and history is reduced to the level of the individual body. Major events, moreover, are dispatched in quick succession, as though the novel, for all its ambitious scope, were impatient with its own material ... A serious, intelligent novel but it is not wholly persuasive ... Still, it would be churlish to dwell on shortcomings ... Lázár may fall short of masterly, but it is unmistakably the work of a talent worth watching.
This chilling intergenerational family saga chronicles the von Lázárs’ enduring hope, love, and perseverance amidst two world wars and spans the Eastern Front as they overcome familial and national tragedy. In this enrapturing debut, Biedermann, along with translator Bulloch, crafts a genre-defying tale that will propel readers across every page.
It feels underdeveloped ... It’s unsurprising to learn that Biedermann is also a short-story writer, which might explain his tendency to flit around between the six main characters ... I rarely find myself wishing for a novel to be longer, but I can’t help thinking about the meatier alternate reality version of Lázár. One which spent more time on the characters, fleshing out their relationships and their perspectives of the advancing time, technology and world events ... I found myself wondering whether this kind of jumpy storytelling is a symptom of our modern inability to focus, driven to constant distractions. Biedermann’s prose is lyrical and ethereal, but (to misquote Shakespeare) I did find myself thinking it was too fleetingly (sic) sweet to be substantial.
Biedermann artfully weaves surreal images and dramatic irony into the family tragedy, as when preteen Lajos fantasizes about escaping his life by sailing on the Titanic, only to feel 'as if he himself had drowned' when he hears that it sank. This is a marvel.
