Product Description

Redolent with the scent of lilac and oleander blossoms, and bursting with the flavors of quinces and overripe plums, Strand of a Thousand Pearls is the story of the imagined and actual marriages of the Azizyan girls, their years of yearning, restless and impatient, and the truth of their engagements, miles away from the enchanted realm and imaginary heroes of their dreams.

Six years ago, Dorit Rabinyan burst onto the scene with Persian Brides, a novel that established her as a writer of incandescent spirit with a gift for spinning wry, magical tales about the vagaries of love and marriage. In Strand of a Thousand Pearls, she has given us a bitter-sweet fable about desires fulfilled and denied—about married love and carnal love, about mother’s love and the kind of love that vanishes one night without warning, like an evaporated dream.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1547074 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-12
• Released on: 2003-08-12
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.01" h x .62" w x 5.19" l, .46 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Rabinyan's second novel (after the international bestseller Persian Brides) maintains an expert balance between lyricism and tough-mindedness. Like Isaac Babel in his Odessa short stories, she knows that a metaphor is not an ornament, but rather a probe (or even a bullet) into the heart. For instance, here is how we are introduced to a rich businessman: "in those days he was squeezing money and tears out of almost every nation in Africa. He began his business career by importing hollow gold jewelry, but by the time he met Sofia he had already become a major purveyor of tear-gas." The Sofia in question is one of the four Azizyan daughters, the beauty of the family. Iran, the mother of this brood, and Solly, their fisherman father, are both Persian-speaking emigrants to Israel. The story is given to us as a sort of allegorical fresco it begins on the morning of Sofia's sister Matti's 11th birthday and examines, in separate insets, the weddings of the girls and their parents' pasts, returning periodically to Matti's birthday. Matti, poor girl, is half-mad, imbued with the energy and craziness of her stillborn twin brother, Moni. The other daughters Lizzie and Marcelle aren't doing so well either. Lizzie used to embarrass her mother by masturbating in public. Marcelle falls hopelessly in love at 13 with Yoel Hajjabi, finally marries him and then falls out of love with him on the day after her wedding. Matti, meanwhile, spends her birthday cutting up the family album and hiding in the backyard with the specter of her demon-lover twin. Rabinyan is a surprising writer the reader's casual expectation that her lyricism will become vapidly sentimental is agreeably disappointed by frequent instances of the coldest realism.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
On their wedding night, as Solly Azizyan reaches for his wife, Iran, the pearls on her elaborate dress start popping off. One by one, 5,854 pearls cascade to the floor to settle in corners and under the furniture. So begins the married life of this couple, and with it the thread of the book. The birth of their five children and the haunting story of a stillborn twin are followed by stories of childhood rebellion, youthful trauma, clothes, hairstyles, love, marriage, and divorce. Dreams and desires infuse the novel, as do the sights and sounds of Israel, where the family lives. Still, while Rabinyan (Persian Brides) writes vividly, and the characters keep us interested, there is no momentum to the book as a whole. Once all the characters have been described and their stories told, the novel ends, fading quickly from memory once the last page is finished. Recommended for large public libraries. Yvette W. Olson, City Univ. Lib., Bellevue, WA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
“A lovely story with compelling characters showcased subtly against the realities of contemporary life in the Middle East.”
—USA Today

“A moving fable of love...exquisite.”
—USA Today

“A formidable talent.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“Rabinyan’s story is, above all, about women....The marriage stories overlap and weave together in a rich pattern that resembles a parable or family legend.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Spellbinding...a literary love story of crushed dreams, part family drama, part modern-day fairy tale.”
—Glamour