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Three Apples Fell From Heaven

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Three Apples Fell From Heaven is alive, mesmerizing, and searing. Micheline Aharonian Marcom's novel is a perfect literary marriage of poetry and narrative-I drank in every word even as I was horrified by the genocide's atrocities. Through sensitive Anaguil's story, loosely based on Marcom's grandmother's, I understood how humans survive, and even triumph over, extremely traumatic experiences, and are changed forever. Anaguil is a remarkable character, totally endearing, unpretentious, and profound. Reading Marcom's novel made me think, "oh yes, I know what she means!, but I had no idea it could experienced and expressed in such a gorgeous and evocative way." She elicits truth(s) from the mundane, profane, and sublime. I can't wait for her next novel.

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!

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.

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.

Three Apples Fell From Heaven had the right amount of spice in telling many interesting yet sad stories. A historical journey for many who will read it and for many who don't know enough about the Armenian Genocide between 1895 to 1917. This novel is a gift by Marcom for many Armenian and other cultural generations to come. The research of information and writing the stories consolidated in this novel are a tribute to those dear Armenians lost, orphaned, mamed and killed by the Turkish Ottoman Government. Ethnic cleansing of the Armenian nation was almost accomplished. Three Apples Fell From Heaven had me crying whilst reading through the many stories written. Stories that can only be told by the survivors of the first ever genocide of last century and written by writers like Marcom. Read and you will sense that something was amiss during your history lessons in school, a history lesson which has been tucked away due to the many events that were taking place in the World War at that time. Lest We Forget.

Honestly, I was extremely disappointed with this book. It seemed more an effort to appear "artsy" and "intellectual" than to tell a story. If you want a straightforward, accessible story of the Genocide, read "Zabelle" by Nancy Krikorian. It has the history, drama, injustice of Genocide without this book's needlessly confusing narrative.