A tragic and beautiful story that manages to retain a wise and hopeful tone.
At the dawn of World War I, two brothers fight for survival in the midst of the Armenian genocide in Mekaelian’s debut novel.
In 1971, the Hagopian family gathers at a Chicago hospital after one of its elders has a stroke. Vartan Hagopian is a professor in his 70s who began his life in Armenia and now may end it in a hospital bed. A doctor tells the family that Vartan called out for a girl named Nadia during the attack that felled him. The name brings up painful memories for his slightly younger brother, Armen, who decides to tell the assembled family members the story of what he and his sibling lived through years ago. The sweeping tale begins in 1913 on the Hagopian family farm, located in the shadow of the Taurus Mountains along the Euphrates River. With the sultan of the Ottoman Empire deposed and the Young Turks in power, Armenians have been promised more equality under the law. Armen’s close-knit Armenian community lives alongside Turks and Kurds in relative peace. The future looks bright to teenage Armen and Vartan, who spend their evenings gazing at constellations. Slowly, though, it becomes clear that the government is overtaxing Armenians and brutally enforcing the practice with violence. Vartan and Armen’s father vows to stay, but as World War I breaks out, circumstances deteriorate, and Armen must find bravery far beyond his years. The most impressive aspect of Mekaelian’s historical tale is how it weaves together so many aspects of Armenian oppression into one family’s story without seeming implausible. The author carefully depicts Kharpert as a pastoral place that also becomes the setting of the worst things that humanity can offer, including forced assimilation, deportation, and outright slaughter. The sensible, memorable characters have an understandable dedication to their territory, and although the subject matter becomes quite bleak, the writing never does. The author shows Armen as a bright, humorous, hardworking teenager faced with unthinkable realities, and the wellsprings of courage that he draws from are seemingly limitless.
A tragic and beautiful story that manages to retain a wise and hopeful tone.Pub Date: April 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-38516-6
Page Count: 436
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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