Lady Lazarus
On the eve of World War II, in Budapest, Magda, the last in a line of Jewish witches, is managing to survive in the employ of a vampire. Her sister Gisele has had a horrific vision of coming death and destruction. Magda wishes to save her sister and herself, as well as the Jewish people and ultimately the world, from approaching evil. To do this she must use her supernatural abilities, and commune with the dead and also with the angel Raziel. She must prevent Nazi demons from seizing a legendary book that will give them supernatural power.
This novel could easily have descended into farce and tastelessness, mixing at it does occult fantasy and the facts of one of history’s greatest tragedies which are still in living people’s memories. But it does justice to history. It draws on Jewish and Hungarian folklore in a fascinating way. The characters are believable, and the historical setting rings absolutely true. The reader gets a sense of what it was like to live in Eastern Europe just before the German army marched into Poland. There is no exploitation of suffering, no violence for its own sake. The book contains a clear-eyed moral vision, and reading this novel we sense the author meant to pen more than an entertainment. But Lady Lazarus is very entertaining – full of suspense, vampires, witches, and things that go bump in the night. There is even a restrained but touching love story.
The prose is simple and clear. The style does not call attention to itself but is a pleasure to read. All in all, this is a beautiful and powerful novel. It requires a bit of a suspension of disbelief but is worth the leap.
