Berenice's infertility is paired with Sara's miscarriages. Like the cantor, Alexander is also a survivor who held the door to his mother's womb shut for nine months, swimming in a dark and watery closet. By way of example Pinsker points to the work of Flannery O Connor and Cynthia Ozick as emitting powerful God-obsessed visions that eschew religious trappings. Pinsker further distinguishes Melvin Jules Bukiet and Thane Rosenbaum as powerful writers of theo-fiction who incorporate into their work the sensibilities of second generation survivors. As theo-fiction The Far Euphrates can sometimes sag under the weight of its own erudition.
Theological quests have to be woven into fiction or else things can turn heavily pedantic.
But Mr. Stollman clearly revels in Jewish learning and for the most part knows how to use it to deepen his work. This is not the post World War II novel that shed Jewish life for WASP culture. As impressive as those novels were for their acute observations of assimilating Jews, this new wave of Jewish American writing is notable for the way in which it embraces Jewish identity. Aryeh Lev Stollman does it by weaving Kabbalah, Jewish history and post-Holocaust imagery into The Far Euphrates. And like Jewish learning itself, all of this is purposefully and blessedly open-ended.