Narine Yurievna AbgaryanReseñas

103000

This was so very wonderful. I sought it out because of a Read Across Asia challenge (the author, Abgaryan, is Armenian), and listen, the "balm for the soul" claim on the front cover was not an oversell.

At first this felt like a collection of connected short stories, but the chapters and various characters wove closer and closer together until it was all clearly a single piece. The story of Anatolia, but really of all of the village of Maran, which after earthquake, locusts, famine, and war, is home to only a few dozen old people. But this isn't a tragic tale of disappearing ways of life, but rather an affirming one of second chances, the ties of relationship and remembrance, the mutual care and aid that makes a community.

Really beautiful.

i m p e r d i b l e !!!
Un dels llibres que més m'ha agradat. Ho té tot: bona història, història gran i història petita, tendresa, imaginació. No apta per qui només vulgui històries realistes, però què hi ha de més real que els sentiments i l'estimació?
Un bravo per la traducció!

En Simon no és un home qualsevol, és enamoradís i enamora moltes dones.
En Simon és el punt de connexió de moltes dones, cadascuna amb una història. El mar terra endins ens les explica.
La Nariné Abgarian té un estil molt particular, a mi m'encanta.
La traducció és impecable. La Marta Nin fa unes traduccions espectaculars.

So far, I have yet to see the good times mentioned in the book's summary. There has been death and war and famine and blood and domestic abuse. I'm sure there is some charm to be found in this story, but I don't have the patience to look for it under all of this grim description of bad times. ~ DNF @ 19%

Anatolia is 58 and one of the villagers of Maran, a village in the mountains of Armenia that's had its share of disaster and heartbreak. When Anatolia starts bleeding, she prepares to die, and thus begins the story of not just Anatolia but many of the villagers, their family and history.

The old Armenian saying that's the epigraph for this book gives it both title and structure:
And three apples fell from heaven:
One for the storyteller,
One for the listener,
And one for the eavesdropper.

The beginning is slow and I wasn't sure what to make of the story. I didn't always think to pick it up, but when I had more than a few minutes and could really sink into the story, I enjoyed it greatly, getting to know the villagers and their stories. Their lives are simple, and the village has been through so much: mudslides, famine, and war. But there is so much hope, and the day-to-day life of Anatolia, Vasily, Yasaman, and so many more are given dignity and importance in the storytelling. Before I knew it, I became invested and cared deeply about each of them.½

And three apples fell from heaven:
One for the storyteller,
One for the listener,
And one for the eavesdropper

This old Armenian saying opens Three Apples Fell from the Sky. Originally published in Russian in 2015, this novel by Moscow-based Narine Abgaryan is now being issued by Oneworld Publications in a flowing and idiomatic English translation by Lisa C. Hayden. And what a delightful book it turns out to be.

The novel is set in Maran, a small, isolated village in the Armenian mountains, where time seems to have stood still. Indeed, the temporal setting of the novel remains vague. Maran seems untouched by modern technology and one gets the impression that the story could be happening over a hundred years ago. But there are hints (especially when the city is mentioned) that the setting is much more recent. It all enhances the feeling that the narrative stands out of time. Several tragedies across the decades – war, famine, pestilence, earthquakes and landslides – have threatened to wipe out Maran, but the tightly-knit community clings on to life, even though its few inhabitants have grown old and infirm.

The novel follows a tripartite structure inspired by the opening proverb. Part I, titled “For the One Who Saw”, focusses on the librarian Anatolia. Although she now in her late fifties, Anatolia is one of the youngest inhabitants of Maran. She is frail and in poor health, resigned to the fact that death has reached her, just as it has taken away her abusive husband and close relatives. But the other villagers, who treat her with almost parental affection, will have none of this. They play matchmakers and, somewhat unexpectedly, set her up with the widowed blacksmith Vasily. The first part of the novel also introduces us to a rich supporting cast of colourful characters who reappear in later sections.

Part II is titled For the One Who Told the Story and its protagonists are Vano, his wife Valinka and their orphaned grandson Tigran. Tigran is the only Maran infant to survive the epochal famine, and he has a solitary upbringing with his doting grandparents. His only companion is a strange white peacock which appeared roughly around the time when Vano and Valinka took Tigran into their care. This section of the novel follows Tigran’s journey into adulthood until his marriage and the birth of his son.

Part III, For the One who Listened, combines the two threads of the story, leading to an unexpected and heart-warming conclusion.

This is a magical novel. It manages to be life-affirming without descending into cheap sentimentality. Tragedy and death stalk its pages, and are never trivialised and understated, yet there is always an underlying seam of humour and hope.

Abgaryan achieves this challenging balance in part through the beauty of the novel’s prose, which mimics the oral storytelling of myths and legends. The novel is, in fact, imbued with a particular brand of magical realism which I particularly associate with Russian and Eastern European authors – the likes of Bulgakov, Remizov, Hamid Ismailov. At times it even reminded me of Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad, despite the very different context. It is a style which is on the one hand earthy and realistic, delighting in minute descriptions of everyday village life, and on the other hand marked by supernatural elements drawn from fables and biblical/religious imagery. Ghosts which haunt the twilight hours; dreams and premonitions; miraculous events… these appear in the novel as matter-of-factly as the delicious dishes prepared by the old villagers.

This novel was a prize-winner in Russia and the English translation will hopefully earn it the new fans it deserves.

For the full review accompanied by a playlist of Armenian music, head to: https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2020/06/three-apples-fell-from-the-sky-by-nar...

4.5*

Armenia

The 20th century has been brutal to the once prosperous mountain hamlet of Maran in Anatolia. An earthquake destroyed half of it, insects ravaged it, drought and famine killed more and wars took all the young men. At 58 Anatolia, the youngest resident lies down to die, but her life is not over at all and we are taken through a centuries worth of episodes among the people of Maran, who do complain, but also persevere. It is set up as a miracle story, so yes, there are a couple, but it is a pleasant tale, edited for a compact read at a leisurely pace.

The title comes from an Armenian proverb and the book is structured according to each line: “As has been established in Maran legends since time immemorial, the night will drop them to earth from the sky: one apple for the one who saw, another for the one who told the story, and a third for the one who listened and believed in what is good.”

It is a story of people living in the remote mountainous Armenian village of Maran, where communications are sparse, natural calamities are numerous, and the people in the community must look out for each other. Time seems to have stopped in an earlier era. As the story opens, fifty-something Anatolia has decided it is time to die but the people of the village reach out to her, and soon she rediscovers her optimism. The second part revolves around a couple whose grandson is the only child-survivor of the great famine. In the third part, the first two storylines converge.

The writing is wonderful and provides a flavor of the traditions of the village:
“A table set for a wake stood under a sprawling nut tree and the edges of the tablecloth fluttered. There was nothing on it now but empty dishes and salt cellars; food would be brought out immediately after the funeral. One of the old women would stand by the gate, toss a towel over her shoulder, place a bucket of water next to herself, and wait patiently. Each person returning from the cemetery would approach her and cup their hands. She would scoop out a mugful of water and pour it into their outstretched hands, washing away the cemetery’s sorrow. After rinsing, they would wipe their hands on the towel hanging from her shoulder, and only then would they go into the yard, where the wake table awaited, set according to all the rules.”

It has a fable-like quality, with a dash of magical realism. Even though it contains multiple tragedies, the people succeed in retaining a hopeful optimism. It contains beautiful descriptions of the region, food, and customs. I read the English translation from the original Russian by Lisa C. Hayden. If you are looking for a timeless uplifting read that never descends into over-sentimentality, give this one a try.

Stories from a fictional mountain village Maran in Armenia, where only old people remain and the single road connecting the village to the valley is losing to grass because it is used only seldom by the only shop owner of the village. I was trying to guess the (current) time, but I guess it is also fictional or it is not important because the time has stopped in the village. All the old people has lived through immense suffering of infectious diseases, famine, landslide, and war and lost most of their loved ones. There is an element of magical realism in the book as miraculous things happen throughout it. However, the locals, though they believe in dreams and signs, go on with their simple, hard-working lives undisturbed by them because what else can be done? That's just how the life is.

This is an odd story. It starts with Anatoliya deciding that she is about to die and settling down to meet it. From there we go backwards into her and the village's past. The village seems to be on its last legs as well, there are no young people left; they have all moved away or died in the troubles, famine and landslide that have all afflicted village, slowing taking their toll. Through this filling in of the past with the continuing of Anatoliya's life lets us meet the neighbours, to understand them and their state of mind and way of life.
As it becomes evident that Analoliya isn't going to expire on cue, life in the village goes on. The ending took me entirely by surprise, but it makes a certain kind of sense, with life going full circle. That sense of closing a circle or of the present mirroring or fulfilling the past recurs several times.
It's a gentle tale, while there is a lot of pain described, there is a sense of having lived through it and survived, despite everything.

THIS WAS A FREE DOWNLOAD VIA BOOKBUB. I THINK. ANYWAY, THANK YOU.

My Review: A clever little folk-tale that mimics the forms of earlier tales with modern, relatable trappings. It’s meant to be a means of processing the upheavals of Armenia as it bumpily traveled from tsars to commissars to…chaos, pure capitalism, as part of Russia then on its own with no stops at any rational place anywhere along the way. We’re not given much information but the wretchedness of the people to use as a calendar. The main event is World War I's Armenian Genocide, there was much suffering; there was much suffering throughout, but the weird thing about it is how little of it seemed to penetrate the inner lives of the characters, really better called "survivors" given how many die in the course of the story. Their village, isolated and insulated all together, goes on, despite the horrific events that unfurl between and around them.

Is that realistic? What do I, fat comfortable American that I am, know about that; I know the author chose the fairy-tale/folk-tale structure and tenor for a reason. The Armenians have a saying:
As has been established in Maran legends since time immemorial, the night will drop them to earth from the sky:
And three apples fell from heaven:
One for the storyteller,
One for the listener,
And one for the eavesdropper.

Welcome, fellow eavesdropper, to the juicy apple of Narine Abgaryan's bestselling Russian-language tale of Armenia's wild ride through the 20th century. Strap your helmet on a little tighter. You're going to meet a lot of people, and not all of them have names you'll be able to pronounce. It does not matter a whit. Love them for who they are, not how they sound in your monoglot's ear. Anatolia, the woman at the actual center of the story, is one of the world's readers-cum-librarians so she merits our rapt attention. It's not hard to give.
Little by little, thanks to intuition and innate taste, she learned to distinguish good literature from bad and fell in love with Russian and French classics, though she came to hate Count Tolstoy, unequivocally and forever, as soon as she finished Anna Karenina.
Happen I agree...but the less said of her shelving preferences the better. Her travails, those of her fellow villagers, are deeply experienced in the author's (and translator's, what a great job Lisa Hayden did on this book! I honestly forgot it was a translation most of the time, and that is meant as a compliment) open, honest, and still lyrical prose:
For eight long, unbearable years, the war reaped a harvest of restless souls around the world, but one day it sputtered out and retreated, howling and limping and licking its bloody paws.
–and–
Anatolia suddenly grasped that there was no heaven and no hell: happiness was heaven and grief was hell. And their God was everywhere, all over, not just because He was all-powerful but also because He was the unseen threads that connect them with each other.

The other feature of the prose you'll have discerned by now is the simple, direct wisdom of it. The author and translator have taken care to make sentences that sound like they've rolled around simple peoples' minds and mouths for long enough to become weighty with meaning and light of touch:
“There’s nothing more destructive than idleness,” his father had loved repeating. “Idleness and leisure deprive life of purpose.”

Vasily now understood the truth of his father’s words. Life does, indeed, lose its purpose at the very instant a person ceases bringing benefit to those around him.

Which is a truth that many of us, disabled and/or retired, learn at a very high cost in self-esteem and peace of mind. It's not, youthful imaginings to the contrary, at all fun to be idle. So what is one meant to do? Find something useful to do! Me, I write book reviews...how about you?

And three apples fell from heaven:
One for the storyteller,
One for the listener,
And one for the eavesdropper

This old Armenian saying opens Three Apples Fell from the Sky. Originally published in Russian in 2015, this novel by Moscow-based Narine Abgaryan is now being issued by Oneworld Publications in a flowing and idiomatic English translation by Lisa C. Hayden. And what a delightful book it turns out to be.

The novel is set in Maran, a small, isolated village in the Armenian mountains, where time seems to have stood still. Indeed, the temporal setting of the novel remains vague. Maran seems untouched by modern technology and one gets the impression that the story could be happening over a hundred years ago. But there are hints (especially when the city is mentioned) that the setting is much more recent. It all enhances the feeling that the narrative stands out of time. Several tragedies across the decades – war, famine, pestilence, earthquakes and landslides – have threatened to wipe out Maran, but the tightly-knit community clings on to life, even though its few inhabitants have grown old and infirm.

The novel follows a tripartite structure inspired by the opening proverb. Part I, titled “For the One Who Saw”, focusses on the librarian Anatolia. Although she now in her late fifties, Anatolia is one of the youngest inhabitants of Maran. She is frail and in poor health, resigned to the fact that death has reached her, just as it has taken away her abusive husband and close relatives. But the other villagers, who treat her with almost parental affection, will have none of this. They play matchmakers and, somewhat unexpectedly, set her up with the widowed blacksmith Vasily. The first part of the novel also introduces us to a rich supporting cast of colourful characters who reappear in later sections.

Part II is titled For the One Who Told the Story and its protagonists are Vano, his wife Valinka and their orphaned grandson Tigran. Tigran is the only Maran infant to survive the epochal famine, and he has a solitary upbringing with his doting grandparents. His only companion is a strange white peacock which appeared roughly around the time when Vano and Valinka took Tigran into their care. This section of the novel follows Tigran’s journey into adulthood until his marriage and the birth of his son.

Part III, For the One who Listened, combines the two threads of the story, leading to an unexpected and heart-warming conclusion.

This is a magical novel. It manages to be life-affirming without descending into cheap sentimentality. Tragedy and death stalk its pages, and are never trivialised and understated, yet there is always an underlying seam of humour and hope.

Abgaryan achieves this challenging balance in part through the beauty of the novel’s prose, which mimics the oral storytelling of myths and legends. The novel is, in fact, imbued with a particular brand of magical realism which I particularly associate with Russian and Eastern European authors – the likes of Bulgakov, Remizov, Hamid Ismailov. At times it even reminded me of Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad, despite the very different context. It is a style which is on the one hand earthy and realistic, delighting in minute descriptions of everyday village life, and on the other hand marked by supernatural elements drawn from fables and biblical/religious imagery. Ghosts which haunt the twilight hours; dreams and premonitions; miraculous events… these appear in the novel as matter-of-factly as the delicious dishes prepared by the old villagers.

This novel was a prize-winner in Russia and the English translation will hopefully earn it the new fans it deserves.

For the full review accompanied by a playlist of Armenian music, head to: https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2020/06/three-apples-fell-from-the-sky-by-nar...

4.5*

DNF at 11% of the audiobook. The book just didn't seem to be going anywhere...

Великолепен роман, един от най-добрите, човешките, светлите и вдъхновяващите, които някога съм чел. Разказ да човешката съдба, доброта, надежда, любов, но също и за дълбоката скръб, нещастието и за безмилостната, понякога, съдба на човека. Зареден с надежда и автентична добрина, романът ще Ви накара да се смеете от сърце, и да плачете от умиление пред съдбата на планинците от Маран.