Forgiving Ararat [Paperback]

Gita Nazareth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 11, 2009

#1 BESTSELLER IN HEAVEN...AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME ON EARTH. "Think Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones) meets John Grisham (The Firm) in the afterlife." Brek Cuttler, a young lawyer, new mother, and wife of a popular television news reporter, dies unexpectedly and, arriving in heaven, learns she has been chosen to join the elite lawyers who defend souls at the Final Judgment. Yet Brek longs for her lost life, and the cause of her death remains a mystery. Searching for answers, Brek attempts to re-create the world she once knew and visit her family in their dreams; but it is her first client in heaven, a young convict, who holds the secret—-a shocking crime long repressed. Guided by her mentor, Luas, a lawyer who has been prosecuting souls for thousands of years, Brek embarks on a quest traversing heaven and earth to bring her killer to justice, uncovering an interlocking past that places her own soul in jeopardy. Entering the courtroom to face her killer at the Final Judgment, Brek must make a momentous choice that will alter her eternity. POSTHUMOUS PRAISE FOR FORGIVING ARARAT: "This glorious, triumphant work leads its readers from the wrathful lands of the east...and back to the Garden of Eden." -John Steinbeck, author of Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. "With mythical prose at times approaching verse, Forgiving Ararat works a miracle, bridging the chasm between life and death." -Emily Dickinson, author of Poems. "At the center of Forgiving Ararat is the Trial each of us must one day face-and the profound metamorphosis each of us must undergo to win." -Franz Kafka, author of The Trial and The Metamorphosis. "This book is the next Lovely Bones!" -Anonymous Recently Departed Reader.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Gita Nazareth's novel mixes the sadness and intrigue of Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones" with the drama and suspense of John Grisham's "The Firm," which made for a suspenseful and enjoyable read.
--The Langston University Gazatte

"Nominated #1 Best Beach Read for 2010"..."Nominated Favorite Spiritual Novel"..."Forgiving Ararat is the next Lovely Bones"..."I was on the edge of my seat"
--Readers on Oprah.com

Nazareth is part Dante, part Steinbeck, and part Ayn Rand using a story to make a nuanced and profound philosophical/spiritual argument..giving us fables and allegories like the great writers of the past.
--Readers on Chicago Tribune.com

We are pleased to announce that Forgiving Ararat by Gita Nazareth is the 2010-11 selection for One Book+One Facebook, the Internet's largest book group bringing Facebook users together around one great book.
--OneBookOneFacebook.org

Product Details

• Paperback: 420 pages
• Publisher: Bette Press (December 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0982560516
• ISBN-13: 978-0982560518
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #743,602 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

GITA NAZARETH lives in the farthest corner of the imagination, where hope triumphs over despair and miracles happen. This is Gita Nazareth's first novel written from that place.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Incredible Book- The Next Beach Read!, January 6, 2010

By 

Lawyer Book Lover "Lawyer Book Lover" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Forgiving Ararat (Paperback)

I loved this book and couldn't put it down. This book transcends several genres being both a legal thriller, spiritual novel and an amazing work of literary fiction --worthy of the Life of Pi and Cold Mountain. Gita Nazareth tells an amazing story of the life and afterlife of Brek Abigail Cuttler that pulls you in from its first chapter where Brek finds herself sitting in an abandoned train station covered in blood but unable to remember how she got there. From the first page the reader is taken on Brek's incredible journey as she tries to cope with her death and bring her killer to justice. Gita Nazareth has created a main character in Brek that every lawyer, wife and mother can easily identify with-- her struggle to balance home and work life as a woman, her quest for justice as a lawyer , and her spiritual awakening as a human being. As she continues on her afterlife journey, Brek comes to realize how her life intertwines with those around her in miraculous ways. Gita Nazareth has a gift of storytelling that is not found in most modern novels. I have heard this book being compared to The Shack and the Lovely Bones. While Forgiving Ararat has the spiritual study of forgiveness found in The Shack and the afterlife experiences as told by a first person narrator in the Lovely Bones, neither of these books can hold a candle to the rich prose found in Forgiving Ararat. The dialogue is wonderful, easy to read and the stories as told through the first person narrative are much more vivid and realistic. I have read all three books and can say, without a doubt, Forgiving Ararat is by far my favorite of the three. I am buying this book for everyone I know- you should too.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars remarkable, inventive, incredible prose, December 2, 2009

By 

Halle Eavelyn "Writer Guru" (LA, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Forgiving Ararat (Paperback)

Forgiving Ararat is, without a doubt, the most original book I have ever read. First-time novelist Gita Nazareth (surely not her real name?) has created a story world which seems to live at the intersection of the film What Dreams May Come, the Bible, and a John Grisham novel, with all the best aspects and deeper meanings of each.

The story begins as the heroine, Brek Cuttler, arrives at a train station called Shemaya just after her death. Perhaps the only previously used image in this novel is the station metaphor, but in the skillful, lyrical hands of Nazareth it becomes much more than a wayplace for the dead. A lawyer in life, Cuttler has been chosen to represent the souls of these dead as they pass their Final Judgment, but first she must learn to accept that she has died and why, as well as learning how to be a presenter of souls in this shimmering, shifting purgatory.

Both a spiritual novel and a rivetingly juicy tale, I found reading Forgiving Ararat almost a religious experience. Nazareth's prose bathes the reader over and over in the light of justice, love and hope, tempering the sinister stories of man's inhumanity with the truth of their reasons for making these dark choices. She turns murderers and rapists, lawyers and newscasters alike, delving back across centuries and even millennia, into dimensional human beings and argues successfully that the pursuit of justice may itself be irrational and unjust, but it is how we order our lives, and forgiveness, if not love, can still conquer all.

Underlying an epic stocked three deep with characters of every ilk, whose stories are interwoven like a colorful hand-knit afghan (even the book's publisher gets a fictional nod as the press of one of the novel's doomed souls) is Nazareth's startling prose: "... the morning sun strikes the bright yellow fall leaves of a maple tree, making the tree appear as though it has burst into flame. A small sparrow lands on a branch, risking immolation." Every sentence bursts with a transcendent pride of place, as if each word is happily embracing the next, and even the least significant description is worth rereading to see what new light Nazareth has shone upon usually mundane text.

Though Nazareth's story of good, evil and the search for justice in what at times can seem like a very unjust world, is spiritual, it also deals with the religions of man: of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, as well as the fanaticism of Nazis, the Aryan Nation, and Holocaust deniers. It is here that Nazareth excels the most, expertly navigating these dangerous waters and bringing the understanding of truth and the desire for reason and justice all the way to Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, even to Jesus and Yahweh Himself (or Themselves, depending on how you look at it). It is as if she is asking us to look at each religion, at each viewpoint, as Cuttler is asked to look at each soul, impartially and without judgment, and we are richer for it by the end of the tale. Forgiving Ararat is not to be missed, and Nazareth's novel, I hope, will be the first of many.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exploring the World of Death in Order to Discover the Truths of Life, December 3, 2009

By 

Laura A. Monroe - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Forgiving Ararat (Paperback)

It is the rare person who does not stop and occasionally wonder what really happens to us when we die. First-time novelist Gita Nazareth's Forgiving Ararat explores this very question in a way not yet seen in our literary canon. From its lyrical beginnings, we are swept into a world beyond death that is both foreign and yet achingly familiar.
We meet Brek Cuttler immediately after her death, sitting in a deserted train station that we later learn is the heart of Nazareth's imagined afterlife world of Shemaya. Shemaya is both magical and beautiful, and yet is simultaneously filled with lawyers and trials and other familiar human terrains, a focus clearly reflected in the early images of the rundown train-station bench and building. As she is initiated into the world of the dead, she finds herself at her beloved great-grandmother Nana's house and with a new job at the train station. As she was a lawyer in life, in death she is asked to be a presenter for those getting ready to stand trial before God for the Final Judgment. From here she is caught up in an unfolding drama of history and the consequences of human choice that eventually, in an unforgettable climax, leads her face to face with her killer.
This book reads like a fantasy novel, with the emergence of the afterlife as a parallel world filled with such curiosities as simultaneous seasons, limitless shopping excursions in empty malls, and cars that navigate the roads without drivers or passengers. These early images of life after death come together to form a world that is at once comforting to consider (as Brek is cared for by loved ones long gone) and yet somehow missing something rather essential, something quite vital to what we the living understand to be "life." What results is a version of the afterlife both poignant and heartbreaking as Brek struggles to come to terms with not only the circumstances of her death but the tenets by which she lived her life. The reader is reminded again and again of Brek's plight and what she has lost in the emptiness of the streets, the haunting images of aspects of her former life forever frozen in time in the home she once shared with her husband and daughter: dirty dishes out on the counter, a half-empty dog dish, her infant daughter's favorite jumper slung over the rail of the crib. Likewise, peppered throughout the story are glimpses that remind us of what she stands to gain, threads of hope and light that can be traced through the recounting of familiar Bible stories reconfigured and retold, and are visually accentuated by images of flourishing gardens, rainbows, and the endless possibilities of cocreation.
The heaven Brek enters is filled with trials and lawyers as she moves to fulfill her "destiny" of being a presenter for those who are coming before God for judgment. Thus, more recent teachings of many contemporary religions in the living world that place a greater focus on universal love and forgiveness are replaced by a more antiquated singular focus on justice and the law. Indeed, this world of Shemaya is posited as "where the final battle is fought between good and evil." Yet to Brek, unfairness and injustice seem to lurk everywhere she looks. Trials appear not to contain the entire life story, focusing instead on the transgressions, and she resolves that in her tenure of presenter, things will be different. Ultimately what we discover is that while for Brek in life, justice is the only salvation, in death, the consequences of that conviction become all too real.
At times literary and prophetic, Forgiving Ararat speaks of the truths that many of us in the living world are reluctant to face. Better yet, it is a compelling story that keeps us turning the pages quickly till the end. Exploring core human issues of judgment and forgiveness, conviction and faith, hatred and love, and our unending search for meaning in this life, Forgiving Ararat speaks to all who have ever sought to understand the complexities of the world we live in.

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