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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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