SOURCE: "High Above the Trenches," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 8, 1993, pp. 3, 6.

An American critic and journalist, Eder received the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1987. In the following highly favorable review of A Very Long Engagement, he argues that the novel is thematically richer than most mystery fiction, describing it as "a hybrid of the detective story and the classical quest."

Procrastination is the heart of writing, and by that measure, this review starts off with a lot of heart. You can struggle for days, not to say what you want but to resist saying what you don't want. It has been a battle to avoid writing of Sébastien Japrisot's novel [A Very Long Engagement] about World War I as a kind of latter-day War and Peace. I lost. It is a kind of War and Peace.

This is not to call it an epic—though...