1969. The decade’s most tumultuous year has passed leaving in its wake two key events that woefully kissed the last of our innocence away; the murder of a fan at Altamont Speedway during the filming of the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter and the murder of a Los Angeles man by a subject of Charles Manson. This historical backdrop gives Lazar a chance to portray key characters in this drama using a different voice. He presents us with a novel with imagined scenarios using real people and the narrative comes off as honest rather than earnest.

Sway is at once, two things. The first is an achievement in stylized writing that uses both prose and poetry to draw in an audience. In addition he uses a documentary style of writing to familiarize the reader with the sensation that was the 1960’s. Sway takes the reader on a journey into the lives of a myriad of historical figures, focusing on Brian Jones, the enigmatic early Rolling Stone guitarist and Bobby Beausoleil, a young would-be star whose involvement with another fledging musician led to a tragic end, a man by the name of Charles Manson. It also tells the tale of how all these lives converged during the filming of one of underground film’s voices; Kenneth Anger, brought them together for a brief moment.

With ease, Lazar takes you from the dingy streets of London, where Jones and a struggling Keith Richards and Mick Jagger bang out Muddy Waters tunes in a freezing tiny apartment, to the Hills of Los Angeles and the infamous Spahn Ranch where Beausoleil butts heads with snake-charmer Manson. Each setting provides a brilliant glimpse to the inner workings of his characters, surmising their motivations, inner thoughts and hostilities without coming off as a cheap historical revisionist. Instead, he delivers a re-imagining of the people with an almost mythical representation of Los Angeles and London in rock and society’s most notorious era.

What leaves the reader mesmerized and, at times, wanting more, is the nameless netherworld he has created. Mick Jagger is simply “Mick”, Charles Manson is just “Charlie”. Given such a colorful, history-laden backdrop one might at first be disappointed in this work in that it does not provide a more concrete chronicle of the events. On occasion it’s greatest strength is at times a weakness as the narrative drifts in too many directions and one is left wondering whose story this is. However, there is a clear and consistent voice which allows the reader to put down their preconceived notions about the characters and live, breathe and most importantly feel what it was like if one were standing in the room. Lazar chooses to focus on the less pedestrian and overly scribed details of the Rolling Stones powerhouse that is Jagger/Richards and the machinations and motivations behind “The Family”. Instead, the author stays with Beausoleil and Jones using Anger’s words metaphorically to describe an era and the idea of his character’s wants and needs.

Sway uses familiar faces and names to describe a powerful force in our lives: sway itself. The influence that money, power, fame, corruption, sex, evil, love can have over us. A brief work, Lazar’s second novel is a controlled and carefully crafted piece for any student of the era.

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