Three Apples Fell From the Sky

Nov 15

Three Apples Fell From the Sky by Narine Abgaryan
Reviewed by Linda
📕📗📘

This book was a great introduction to Central Asian literature by way of Armenia. Within the pages of this book, we visit the remote and declining village of Maran, where time stands still and the inhabitants live each day to the next warding off evil and death which hangs in the air from one generation to the next. Superstition, cultural rites and religion make up the Maranian landscape and its people.

In the middle of it all, we meet Anatolia Sevoyants as she is seemingly ready to meet her end - but the universe has other ideas.

There is a lot of grief and sadness in this novel but despite this it doesn’t feel overwhelming or burdensome at all. The author still maintains an air of hope as we follow the residents through the mundanities of everyday life, through famine and war, through joy and tribulation.

The author gives us the history of Maran through the generations of the Sevoyants family and relatives, and it was this aspect which had me hooked - who doesn’t love a multigenerational story?

Overall, this story is a slow one and I’d have preferred a bit more action. I do understand however, that the nature of this novel was not to be rushed and to savour the world of Maran - I’m just impatient!

women writersarmeniacentral asiaone worldone world publicationsthree apples fell from the skynarine abgaryanarmenian literaturewomen authorsfiction

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

Three Apples Fell From the Sky

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