Sway - Softcover

Lazar, Zachary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0224080881 ISBN 13: 9780224080880

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2008

Synopsis

By the end of the sixties, 'the decade itself knows that it can never return, that it has only this one chance to live up to its own extremes,' as Zachary Lazar writes in his extraordinary new novel. Three dramatic and emblematic stories intertwine in Sway-the early days of the Rolling Stones, including the romantic triangle of Brian Jones, Anita Pallenberg and Keith Richards; the life of avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger; and the community of Charles Manson and his followers. Lazar illuminates a particular hour in American history when rapture found its roots in idolatrous figures and led to unprovoked and inexplicable violence.

Running through all the life stories in this novel is Bobby Beausoleil, a beautiful Californian boy, who eventually joined the Manson 'family'. In 1969 he appeared-along with the Stones-and various Hell's Angels-in Anger's film, Invocation of My Demon Brother. In Sway, Bobby is the embodiment of how a rising tide of suppressed conflict and debauchery needed, among other things, real devils, like Manson, and iconic ones, like Mick Jagger, to permit its expression. Many young revellers, expecting only joy and camaraderie from the era's music and communes, fell under a darker spell. Zachary Lazar puts together the pieces of a decade's rise and fall with uncanny conviction and imagination.

About this title

Product Description:

Unusual book

Review:

`Lazar's hugely impressive achievement is to evoke the energy of an over-documented time in a new way...Lazar's feel for the dialogue of Jagger and Richards, for their louche humour, is so instinctive that you forget that what you're reading is an extrapolation. As dark and enigmatic as its central subjects, Sway often feels like a whole new genre of folklore fiction...it's irresistible' -- Daily Mail

`dark, intricate eulogy to the bloody death of Sixties idealism'
-- Esquire

'...layers of manipulation and control...the most haunting spell is the one that Lazar casts over the reader...' -- Daily Telegraph

'Lazar's empathetic reconstructions attain a psychologically astute solidity... a glimpse of the worlds the protagonists dreamed... then cocooned themselves in' -- New Statesman

`Lazar is a clever enough writer to let his juxtapositions and cross-cuts do the work: indeed his visual imagination pervades...' Bharat Tandon -- TLS

`a new folklore removed from the heady image of the 1960s ... it's only a vision of reality but Lazar certainly makes it a believable one' -- Metro

`reveals Lazar to be a considerable talent', Michel Faber -- The Guardian

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0224080881
• ISBN 13: 9780224080880
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272