Dreams of Bread and Fire
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“By turns funny, tragic, astute, and enlightening, [Dreams of Bread and Fire] is an engrossing coming-of-age tale.” —Library Journal, starred review
Half Jewish, half Armenian Ani is desperately in love with a New England boy with a trust fund as big as his appetites, and the farthest thing possible from the Old World accents and superstitions that filled her childhood home. But after leaving for a year in Paris, she receives a letter from him ending their relationship.
Embarking on a series of romantic misadventures, Ani soon reconnects with a childhood friend. Elusive and intriguing, Van Ardavanian is preoccupied with the Armenian heritage they share and provides Ani with a new connection to her identity—even as she begins to suspect that he has a secret, and dangerous, identity himself. The dark shadows of history surrounding Van propel Ani into a profound and passionate series of journeys: a quest for a long-dead father, a search for the clues of a nearly forgotten genocide, and a love threatened by a quietly gathering storm of murder and retribution.
“Kricorian does for young women what James Joyce did for middle-aged men: She allows us to scramble safely amid the debris of new love, rejection, sex and identity.” —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On a university fellowship in Paris, Ani Silver recovers from a failed love affair and comes to terms with her Armenian heritage in this fitfully lyrical but clumsily plotted novel. Just a few weeks into her stay in France, Ani is dumped by her self-involved trust-fund boyfriend in the U.S. Still hopelessly smitten, she finds it hard to forget him, even with the distraction of her semiotics classes at the Sorbonne and her duties as the au pair for a rich American couple and their daughter. Only a fortuitous encounter with her distant cousin Van Ardavanian, who grew up with her in the Armenian enclave of Watertown, Mass., rouses her from her depression. After they meet on Christmas Eve in Paris, they begin to see each other often. Van says he is working for an Armenian relief agency, but he disappears on odd errands. After a romantic trip to Corsica, Ani discovers that he is carrying a fake Cypriot passport and confronts him. His confession comes close to shaking her love for him, but also launches her into a study of the fate of the Armenians at the hands of the Turks. Her mother's parents fled Armenia during the genocide and now live in Watertown; her father's parents were devoutly Jewish and disowned their son after he married outside the faith. Back in the U.S., Ani sets out to learn all about both sides of her family, while worrying about Van, who disappeared just before she left Paris. Kricorian (Zabelle) can paint vivid tableaus, but she often strains for poetic effect, and Ani's self-conscious romantic musings vie awkwardly with the Armenian themes for top billing. All sorts of threads dangle at the novel's hasty conclusion, and readers will be left wishing Kricorian had focused her tale more tightly.
