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A review by napkins
Orhan's Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian
4.0
There's a balance in telling stories that carry pain: is telling the story cathartic, lancing the boil and sharing the pain, or poking the wound, tearing back the scab and keeping the pain fresh, never healing?
When it comes to history and the atrocities buried in the years, stories that are covered until those who can speak of them can't speak any longer, there's another layer: learning the full history of a land, of a culture, of how these acts happened and how to prevent them in the future.
But there's still pain, still that choice of both the teller and the listener to utilize it, to embrace it. Ohanesian does a masterful job of telling not only a story of families broken apart and pieced together in a way never intended, of war and the Armenian Genocide, but of the importance of stories. Of telling them and listening to them, the balance of past, present, and future, and of the balance of words and the emotions and intents behind them.
It's a beautifully done debut novel; Ohanesian weaves words and phrases elegantly and evocatively, bringing the story to life with all its pain and beauty intact.
When it comes to history and the atrocities buried in the years, stories that are covered until those who can speak of them can't speak any longer, there's another layer: learning the full history of a land, of a culture, of how these acts happened and how to prevent them in the future.
But there's still pain, still that choice of both the teller and the listener to utilize it, to embrace it. Ohanesian does a masterful job of telling not only a story of families broken apart and pieced together in a way never intended, of war and the Armenian Genocide, but of the importance of stories. Of telling them and listening to them, the balance of past, present, and future, and of the balance of words and the emotions and intents behind them.
It's a beautifully done debut novel; Ohanesian weaves words and phrases elegantly and evocatively, bringing the story to life with all its pain and beauty intact.