Reviews of Rise The Euphrates
"The writing is so good it can raise the hairs on your neck." — Mademoiselle Magazine "A beautiful and generous book....the best first novel of 1994." — Chicago Tribune "A novel of extraordinary compassion, it's also a dead—on view of assimilation and the American experience." — Phoenix Gazette "Few first novels are as deeply felt, yet so clearly communicative, as this one. It touches universals while powerfully evoking the everyday world in which we cope within our families with past, present and future ... Edgarian's novel has literary award written on every page." — A San Diego Union-Tribune "One of the summer's Best Reads!" — Vogue "To the list of well—wrought generational sagas – John Steinbeck's East of Eden, Alex Haley's Roots and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club – add [Carol Edgarian's] powerful first novel, Rise The Euphrates." — Seattle Post-Intelligencer "This is a book whose generosity of spirit, intelligence, humanity and finally ambition are what literature ought to be and rarely is today — daring, heartbreaking and affirmative, giving order and sense to our random lives." — Washington Post Book World "Edgarian's sumptuous writing and uncommon wisdom about the human spirit and its maiming seep into a reader's heart, refusing to leave. This is a stunning debut, a book that will doubtless haunt its readers as it beguiles them." — Miami Herald "Rise The Euphrates is an important, powerful poignant novel.... Carol Edgarian's prodigious talents as a storyteller, her ability to account what there was and was not for these Armenian Americans, should not be missed." "Rise The Euphrates packs an emotional wallop." — Elle "...Vivid, chilling ... Rise The Euphrates richly drawn characters and the haunted voice of the narrator will long remain in readers' memories." "Carol Edgarian is a remarkable writer of intelligence and compassion. In her novel, history and personal story deftly intertwine, making Rise The Euphrates a complex of emotions and questions about humanity, love and family. Why do survivors of genocide find the remainder of their lives suffused with unspeakable shame? What transforms in the next generation and the one after that? And how do differences in perception about the past and future create a chasm among families?....Carol Edgarian has written an important story that is at once unique and universal. She will be hailed as an important new writer." — Amy Tan "How often do you get to read a book that captures you so entirely and deeply that it controls your days, measures them out and defines them by how long it will be before you can get to your next night's reading? Rise The Euphrates is on of these rare treasures: a work of power, grace, beauty and exquisite tenderness. This book goes beyond the reading experience; it reminds you of your own hopes and terrors. Rise The Euphrates will live for a long, long time in the manner of Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. "Where is Armenia today? ... one could almost say that Armenia persists in Carol Edgarian's prose." "Rise The Euphrates will draw any reader into Edgarian's spell." — The Georgia Guardian "In Edgarian's hands [the novel] becomes a richly woven tale spanning three generations of women." — Hartford Advocate "Carol Edgarian's first novel is a real lemon — but not in the used-car sense. The book is spine-tingingly sour, delicious but painful, startlingly good and remembered long afterward." — Daily Iowan "Powerful, affecting." — Hartford Courant "Rise The Euphrates is a story to relish." — Blade Citizen "Rise The Euphrates is a powerful, haunting novel that lingers in the imagination. It is a story of victims and betrayers, fear and yearning and the family ties that bind us.... Edgarian's writing is masterful." — The Charlotte Observer "An ambitious and evocative first novel." — San Francisco Chronicle "A valuable addition to American immigrant literature." — Publisher's Weekly "At last, the book we've been waiting for — heart mending, redemptive and impossible to put down." — Diana Der Hovanessian "Deeply affecting ... highly accomplished. An unusually intelligent look at the American immigrant experience." — Kirkus Reviews "Powerful.... Rise The Euphrates tells universal truths about mother-daughter relationships." — LA Village View "Edgarian's skill at nailing the moment, emotion, and scene provides much pleasure in the reading." — Rocky Mountain News |
