Rating: 
Summary: Excellent - Apples Fell from Heaven
Review: Apples Fell from Heaven is an eyeopening sureal poetic account of the not so well known halocaust led by Hitler of the Armenian race in Turkey between 1915 and 1917. The writer tells the story from several completely different points of view, therby sheding light on the broad impact of the halocaust. I found it both informative and spiritual.
Rating:
Summary: Painfully beautiful
Review: I am about to re-read this novel because it was so rich and complex that I don't think I fully appreciate the first time. As a granddaughter of Genocide survivors, I am so glad to see "our " generation beginning to write so powerfully and well about this still unresolved chapter in the history of all Armeninans.
Now if only we could have someone take Three Apples Fell from Heaven or Rise, the Euphrates or any of the newer books and adapt them to film then the Armenians would have a "Shindler's List" of their own- a film that is accessible to the general public and helps them understand the Genocide and the pain and injustice we still endure and which will reain unresolved until the Turkish government stops it's campaign of denial.
Rating:
Summary: A novel I will never forget
Review: I am avid reader of fiction, and I love to own books so that I can flip through them again and again, remembering a sentence or line. But it isn't often that I find a novel like Micheline Marcom's Three Apples Fall From Heaven -- a novel that I could not put down, a story that crawled under my skin until it became a part of my dreams. I reached the last page of this book and started again on the first, something I haven't done since I was a child reading Jane Eyre. Marcom writes prose with the care of poet. She immerses the reader in a world of her creation -- and it's violent, messy, cruel, all-too-human place. Yet behind the violence linger vivid images of family and love, and Marcom finds her story in the conjunction of these emotions. To say that Marcom is unforgiving is perhaps to strong: although one can find ferocious rage in her pages, it is tempered by the skill with which she reaches into the minds and hearts of murderers and victims alike. Perhaps the better word is unforgetting. With this book, she creates memory. Having read Three Apples, this memory is now mine.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing "Armenian" novel
Review: I have read many survivor's memoirs, and while I understand that this is a novelized compilation of many stories, I am very disappointed in it overall. I am put off by the language used in the novel, which has affected my enjoyment while reading it. Of all the Armenians I know, both friends and relatives, none use this kind of language (swearing and detailed sexual references). I can only suggest that it is the Armenians who were raised in Turkey after the genocide, who were without benefit of Christian upbringing and had only Moslem influence, who may have been this way. Compared to the Armenians I know, it is very BASE language.
Rating:
Summary: A poetic and a different type of novel
Review: I just finished reading it and just like a poem i wanted to read it again to understand it better and to feel it deeper. It is a different type of story telling. There are many characters and the voices stays in your head. The novel is about Armenian genocide told from many different levels.
Rating:
Summary: painfully beautiful
Review: Marcom's novel is, put simply, a gem. Structured effectively in a series of counterpoints and juxtaposing voices, the writing an odd blend of Flaubertian economy and the search for the "mot juste" with a Whitmanesque expansive sensibility: a veritable literary kaleidoscope. The author's command of her subject--the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1922 perpetrated by the Young Turk government in Ottoman Turkey--and the amount of research involved here is complemented by an eclecticism that challenges lazy or complacent reading habits. Marcom's book combines a variety of genres with a creative energy and spontaneity that is protean in scope, and her writing styles and tones and moods are at times reminiscent of Saroyan, or even Joyce. A marriage of lyrical poetry with historical fiction, of fictional autobiography with epistle and fable, of epigram with interior monologue: the novel is a hybrid that captures well the difficulty of writing about these events in a direct fashion. Indeed, Marcom's novel is a dramatic display of the complex interdiscursive pugilism that is occasioned when imaginative writing and historical representation meet at a crossroad. Under the narrative layers, Marcom seems to be asking herself and her readers to think about what it might mean to be writing about events such as Genocide, what might be at stake on a personal and collective level, and what might be the consequence of stoking the fires of memory and trauma. To be sure, the book does not offer preachy, easy answers.
Nevertheless, the book is relatively accessible. The reader encounters multiple voices and characters, which relate distinct viewpoints and convey some of the local color and the unfolding of the drama occuring before, during, and immediately following the uprooting, the deportation, and the massacres: some characters are left for dead at the bottom of a watering well, some left to die in the scorching heat of the Syrian and Mesopotamian deserts, or some newly born left to fend off birds of prey or to be bayonetted during target practice. But while the many stories told here are disturbing and sometimes brutally graphic, Marcom packs unexpected beauty and unimaginable tenderness with her punches; found in her book is an unshakeable love for those who not only perished but those who lived and live on with the unbearable weight of memory that will continue, by necessity and love, to give voice to their otherwise untold stories.
Marcom makes her mind-blowing entrance into the literary world, placing her book upon shelves that contain the works of a coterie of long-established Armenian-American writers (the likes of William Saroyan, David Kherdian, Peter Sourian, Peter Najarian, among others), and her book makes an important and original contribution to a current corpus of writings on the Armenian Genocide (see, among others, Nancy Kricorian, Adam Bagdasarian, Agop J. Hacikyan and Jean-Yves Soucy).
Rating:
Summary: painfully beautiful
Review: This book was so heartbreaking and so painful to read but I'm so glad I read it. It's not just profound and meaningful because it discusses the Armenian genocide (something most of use know little about) but the various points of view make this book one of the most powerful I've read. We see and feel, through this book, the horror that the Armenians faced but also some of the struggles of the Turks, and even the American, during this horrible time in world history. Read it!
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful work
Review: This is one of those rare books that you can not put down once you start. It is a very realistic book based on the horrors of the 1915 Armenian Genocide commited by the Turks. The writing is unmatched and the content captivating.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful work
Review: Though genocide is the most horrific act humans commit against each other, forgetting genocide is the most grievous act future generations could commit against its victims. As the Nazis were about to undertake the complete annihilation of European Jewry, the existing quip, "Who remembers the Armenians?," served to assuage any anxiety about the historical responsibilities of the perpetrators. Oblivion assists genocidal murderers; they despise memory, for remembrance sanctifies victims and reminds us of the desperate pain and transcendant suffering those victims experienced during the process of their effacement from the world. Thus Micheline Aharonian Marcom's exquisite "Three Apples Fell from Heaven" is a novel used as historical vengeance. It not only chronicles the Ottoman Turks frighteningly successful attempted genocide of her Armenian ancestors; the novel emereges as a full-blown triumph of memory, family and culture. Redolent with a sensory array of violence (ranging from the sexual to the excremental), "Three Apples" puts faces on victims, perpetrators and bystanders. The former becomes tangible; Armenians have names, faces, families, foods, and language. The Turks not only set out to murder people, but to eradicate centuries of historical co-existence. Reading this harrowing, segmented novel will remind readers how precious and tenuous multiculturalism is and how hard members of a diverse society must work to maintain not only tolerance, but dignity and mutuality. "Three Apples" is not an easy novel to read. Written in abrupt chapters (some of which are no longer than one page) and swirling in time, the novel relies on its characters, who become living symbols of degradation, despair, and survival. In places, central characters observe the disintegration of others and lament their own powerlessness to oppose humiliation. Sargis, a sensitive poet sequestered in women's clothes in his mother's closet, presents a terrifying description of an honored professor's degradation and descent into madness after being jailed and tortured. Sargis' subsequent existential rumination on the nature of evil is more than mere academic wonderings. As to what provokes evil, Sargis asks, "Does it live in all of us, regardless of blood or kin, like a viper waiting in the hollow of a fir tree? Should we step lightly around the perimeter of every fir tree? Do we carry hollows, and in them this thing, expectant?" Despite his obsession with bodily orifices, Sargis arouses our most profound sympathy; his demise hurts deeply. When Ms. Marcom describes the death of infants on forced marches and involuntary exile, she underscores the uncounted number of absolutely defenseless Armenians who perished in brutal exodus. Western indifference resonates with quiet ugliness through the dispatches of American consul Leslie Davis. This effete functionary writes painfully accurate accounts of mass deportations and murder but easily interrupts his official responsibilities whenever a game of bridge beckons. His awareness and lack of response symbolizes the facade of neutrality and feigned concern. His conscience, which compels written recounting, is mute, ultimately false. Ever present in this novel is Ms. Marcom's need to honor her heritage and family. Her maternal grandmother, a rare survivor, is the source of the novel and her mother provides inspiration. Writing "Three Apples" serves as an act of hope as well as anger. By trusting readers with memory, the author wisely reminds us that the living have enormous responsibilities to the past. As we read and become repulsed by the plight of the Armenians, we must also gain our courage to remember the martyrs in our daily lives. It is for the living to combat the evils that produce the impulse for genocide. Michelene Aharonian Marcom not only honors her family; she bestows hope for the human possibility that good may overcome evil.
Rating:
Summary: a wrenching, horrific and poetic triumph of memory
Review: Though genocide is the most horrific act humans commit against each other, forgetting genocide is the most grievous act future generations could commit against its victims. As the Nazis were about to undertake the complete annihilation of European Jewry, the existing quip, "Who remembers the Armenians?," served to assuage any anxiety about the historical responsibilities of the perpetrators. Oblivion assists genocidal murderers; they despise memory, for remembrance sanctifies victims and reminds us of the desperate pain and transcendant suffering those victims experienced during the process of their effacement from the world. Thus Micheline Aharonian Marcom's exquisite "Three Apples Fell from Heaven" is a novel used as historical vengeance. It not only chronicles the Ottoman Turks frighteningly successful attempted genocide of her Armenian ancestors; the novel emereges as a full-blown triumph of memory, family and culture. Redolent with a sensory array of violence (ranging from the sexual to the excremental), "Three Apples" puts faces on victims, perpetrators and bystanders. The former becomes tangible; Armenians have names, faces, families, foods, and language. The Turks not only set out to murder people, but to eradicate centuries of historical co-existence. Reading this harrowing, segmented novel will remind readers how precious and tenuous multiculturalism is and how hard members of a diverse society must work to maintain not only tolerance, but dignity and mutuality. "Three Apples" is not an easy novel to read. Written in abrupt chapters (some of which are no longer than one page) and swirling in time, the novel relies on its characters, who become living symbols of degradation, despair, and survival. In places, central characters observe the disintegration of others and lament their own powerlessness to oppose humiliation. Sargis, a sensitive poet sequestered in women's clothes in his mother's closet, presents a terrifying description of an honored professor's degradation and descent into madness after being jailed and tortured. Sargis' subsequent existential rumination on the nature of evil is more than mere academic wonderings. As to what provokes evil, Sargis asks, "Does it live in all of us, regardless of blood or kin, like a viper waiting in the hollow of a fir tree? Should we step lightly around the perimeter of every fir tree? Do we carry hollows, and in them this thing, expectant?" Despite his obsession with bodily orifices, Sargis arouses our most profound sympathy; his demise hurts deeply. When Ms. Marcom describes the death of infants on forced marches and involuntary exile, she underscores the uncounted number of absolutely defenseless Armenians who perished in brutal exodus. Western indifference resonates with quiet ugliness through the dispatches of American consul Leslie Davis. This effete functionary writes painfully accurate accounts of mass deportations and murder but easily interrupts his official responsibilities whenever a game of bridge beckons. His awareness and lack of response symbolizes the facade of neutrality and feigned concern. His conscience, which compels written recounting, is mute, ultimately false. Ever present in this novel is Ms. Marcom's need to honor her heritage and family. Her maternal grandmother, a rare survivor, is the source of the novel and her mother provides inspiration. Writing "Three Apples" serves as an act of hope as well as anger. By trusting readers with memory, the author wisely reminds us that the living have enormous responsibilities to the past. As we read and become repulsed by the plight of the Armenians, we must also gain our courage to remember the martyrs in our daily lives. It is for the living to combat the evils that produce the impulse for genocide. Michelene Aharonian Marcom not only honors her family; she bestows hope for the human possibility that good may overcome evil.
|
