Three Apples Fell from Heaven [Hardcover]

Micheline Aharonian Marcom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 19, 2001

A powerfully original, poetically wrought first novel about the disappearance of a village during the Armenian genocide begun in 1915-the debut of a brilliant literary stylist.

"Spectacularly gifted, tender, wise, and terrible in rage, Micheline Marcom has woven a heart-rending tapestry from the lost time, lost places, and lost voices of the Armenian genocide."
-Junot D'az

Here is a novel of import and style, set in 1915-1917, the years of the Ottoman Turkish government's campaign of unspeakable brutality that resulted in the deaths of more than a million Armenians. Through a series of chapters that have the weight and economy of poetry, Micheline Aharonian Marcom introduces us to the stories of Anaguil, an Armenian girl taken in by Turkish neighbors after the death of her parents and who now views the remains of her world through a Muslim veil; Sargis, a poet hidden away in his mother's attic, dressed in woman's clothing, and steadily going mad; Lucine, a servant and lover of the American consul, reviled by the villagers for the illusory privilege she enjoys; Maritsa, a rage-filled Muslim wife who leaves her husband while he is at the front and becomes a whore; and Dickran, an infant left behind under a tree on the long exodus from an Armenian village, whose tiny hands reach up to touch the stars, who dies with his name unrecorded. Through these lives, we witness the vanishing of a people.

In pages replete with indelible images of beauty and horror, Marcom conjures the steam and the gossip of the hamam, the ghostly fragrance of rose petal preserves, and the metallic chill of fear. Her novel is an elegy to the final days of Orientalism and an elegant memorial to the victims of the twentieth century's first genocide. Together, the stories of these lives form a narrative mosaic-faceted, complex, exquisite in its detail, a devastating tableau.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Reading this heartbreaking, beautiful, painful first novel is a bit like reliving an extraordinarily long dream. The leaps in time, the abundance of plot lines, the casual occurrence of unspeakable events and the persistent flashbacks all give the text a distinctly dreamlike quality. But the book is based in fact: it is set in Turkey between 1915 and 1917, when the government organized the systematic massacre of the Armenian population (Hitler was later to imitate some of the Turkish techniques). Marcom's form emphasizes the nature of her subject the many stories within stories, intertwined lives, murders and madness reflect the intricate interdependencies of a nation. A few of the many protagonists are Anaguil, an Armenian girl sheltering with a Muslim family, trying to hold on to her culture; Sargis, a student hiding from the Turkish police in his mother's attic, writing poetry as he loses his mind; Lucine, a servant at the American embassy, and the consul's mistress; Rachel, who has known all of them and who speaks after her death from the bottom of a well; Maritsa, a Muslim woman who wishes she were a boy these characters and others tell their stories in interconnected chapters. This is a novel in which chronology stretches and loops, the tale returning again and again to the central reality of brutality, cruelty and loss. The highly mannered style manifests a debt to the postmodern novel and the fairy tale, resulting in something between a cry and a reminiscence. This book is not for the faint of heart, but its readers will be well rewarded.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This first novel is not an easy read not because of any stylistic complexity (its prose is as supple and clear as a mountain brook) but because of the grim subject: the 1915-17 genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman government, an act of brutal inhumanity modern Turkey has yet to acknowledge. Drawing on the experiences of her grandmother, a survivor, Marcom seeks to record the many voices of the Armenian massacre and diaspora through fiction. Her book is not a novel in the conventional sense but rather a collection of vignettes, short stories, prose poems, and fables, all presenting these many voices, from Anaguil, a young Armenian girl taken in by her Turkish neighbors after her parents' deaths, to Dickran, a baby abandoned under a tree during a forced exodus. This unusual narrative device is both the book's strength and its weakness. By introducing so many characters, Marcom conveys the incomprehensible scope of the slaughter, yet this also has the unintended effect of distancing the reader. So many characters appear briefly and promptly disappear that it is difficult to connect to any particular one. Still, Marcom does an important service of calling attention to an almost forgotten 20th-century tragedy. For larger fiction collections. Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 270 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Books; First edition. edition (April 19, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573221864
• ISBN-13: 978-1573221863
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #956,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a wrenching, horrific and poetic triumph of memory, May 8, 2002

By 

Bruce J. Wasser (Lake Bluff, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Three Apples Fell From Heaven (Mass Market Paperback)

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.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A novel I will never forget, May 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Three Apples Fell from Heaven (Hardcover)

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.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Three Apples...fine work, August 20, 2001

By 

"goolkasianann" (boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Three Apples Fell from Heaven (Hardcover)

Three Apples Fell From Heaven is the book I would have hoped to have written! I say this as an aspiring writer. I can't think of higher praise. Ms. Marcom has produced a compact, poetic masterpiece that manages to feed the reader historic details while communicating, to an almost uncanny degree, what it felt like to live as an Armenian under brutal Ottoman rule. Bravo to this young(!) writer. A must read.