Nancy Kricorian

The synopsis on the book jacket is so inadequate at describing this book. This story twines back and forth, wraps around itself, but this structure works. Here we see the world thru a young woman's mind--all her insecurities, memories sparked by events around her, every event evoking some past event, and Ani is swept up in the recall. Sometimes it is even evident that she has spaced out during real time (and not just in the written structure) as someone she is talking to will ask if she heard what they just said. And not just memories, but dreams and imaginations.
One thread tying this together is brought to our attention by the definition of nostalgia which Ani records "an aching in the heart for the homeland" (p.105). Ani has never known her homeland, and her grandparents never speak of the genocide they escaped from there. Ani's father died when she was 4, disowned by his family, and her grandmother only speaks negatively about him. So, yes, as the synopsis states, you could describe this book as a search for identity, but it is much less straightforward than that.
In a way, Ani is a very ordinary college student, and maybe that's why I connected so strongly with this book, it reinforces the shared needs and desires we all have for love and acceptance, for understanding who we are and how we fit into the history of our people--no matter whether we come from a foreign land and culture or whether we are 6th generation Euro-American. The theme of "tribe" comes up in this book-- an attempt to mitigate feeling like an outsider, as Ani talks about a college "secret society" she was initiated into, students desperately trying to create a tribe, the "invisible glue that holds the Establishment together" (p.113), the "enveloping arms of an exclusive community of women" (p.115).
There is the theme of "Historical grief" as an unspoken thread throughout (as also in recently read Woman Warrior and The Scalpel and the Silver Bear), which is explored in a recent video I've seen on epigenetics, a new science which is discovering how environmental influences including mother's emotional state during pregnancy switch off the expression of different genes and become inherited by children and grand children for unknown generations.
Another theme is Ani's fear of being trapped--despite her attraction to the lifestyle and entitlement (p.111)of the wealthy-- into the kind of life exemplified by the only role models she has for educated women: "a grown woman of reasonable intelligence who spent most of her days shopping, lunching..." (p 23-4)
I like how each chapter heading seems to be a traditional Armenian saying--or at least something that might have been said by Ani's grandfather. She tells us that she brought his sayings to her 3rd grade teacher when they were learning adages--but they weren't quite what the American teacher had in mind (p 160). e.g. "the mouth is the heart's interpreter".

I loved Kricorian's descriptions, strikingly novel, yet so apt for picturing emotions --even when Asa tries to teach her to live in the moment without thought, her automatic response is descriptive (p 94). "The moon sat in the satin sky like a crooked bowl. God ladled sadness into the bowl until it spilled from the heavens like bitter milk. Ani caught the milk in her cup and drank it down" (p.210). "Love was a dandelion growing from a crack in the pavement, with fierce green leaves and an improbable sunshine of a flower " and "sadness welled up inside her like a spring creek flooded by rain. Cold gray water churned over rocks, sweeping along twigs, leaves, and old losses, large and small "(p.161).
>
what were the dreams of bread and fire? I thought, since the second chapter opens with her dreams about Satan, that the fire was hellfire, but perhaps more accurate to say it is the stove pilot light where Ani imagines the protective hearth angel lives (p.150). And the bread is the food that Ani's grandmother gives to express her love, having lost her family during the starvation at the time of the Armenian genocides. One of the chapter headers is "the hungry dream of bread, the thirsty of water".
2011 review… (meer)

All the Light There Was; Kricorian, Nancy
This suffers because of its similarity in title and subject with Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See. This is also set in Paris during the Nazi Occupation and it also is about a young girl. End of similarities. This story is about an Armenian family, the parents are refugees from the Armenian Genocide. The book is much less complicated than the Doerr book. Its straightforward telling is like a grandparent might talk to young family members. "How I met your grandfather during the war." Its really a YA novel and as such it is a good introduction to how life goes on in difficult times. I received a finished copy from author through a Goodreads giveaway.… (meer)

Maral and her brother Missak are the children of orphans; their parents' families were killed in the Armenian genocide, and came to Paris to begin a new life together. The family of four lives in a small apartment in Belleville along with the mother's sister - the children's Auntie Shakeh - who also survived the genocide. When the Germans invade Paris, the whole family endures the wartime conditions of hunger and fear, and Missak and his friends Zaven and Barkev (brothers) begin working for the Resistance.

Maral herself does not participate in Resistance activities; she is a "good girl" who is at the top of her class at school, the "scholar" of the family. Her sphere is small, made up of the close-knit community of Armenians in Paris, who are both French and separate from the French; they are more empathetic toward the plight of the Jews because of their own recent genocide. Maral is disturbed when her Jewish neighbors and classmates are rounded up and sent away, and her family harbors their Jewish neighbor's child until Missak arranges for her to be transported to a relative in the Free Zone. But the reality of the war does not really set in for Maral until it strikes closer to home, when Zaven - to whom she is secretly engaged - and Barkev disappear.

The war dwarfs normal adolescent concerns, mostly, but Maral still must go about the business of growing up and making decisions both romantic and practical. Though she has close friends and is close to her parents, she operates independently, within the constraints of her community. She is more sensible than romantic, and always does the right thing; she's an easy character to root for, but she does not inspire with heroics. Which is not to say that All the Light There Was isn't a lovely, sad, accurate rendering of the Armenian community in Paris during and after WWII; it is, and I recommend it.

Quotes:
"Sweetheart," Karnig said, "now you've said no three times and we've said yes three times, so it's finished." (38)

As hours went by, the wall clock dosed out the minutes like medicine. (97)

She made me think of a bell with no clapper. (102)

"The world is made of dark and light, my girl, and in the darkest times you have to believe the sun will come again, even if you yourself don't live to see it." (103)

"What if they catch you? We won't know a thing. I'll be walking down the rue de Belleville and I'll see your name on a poster. 'Zaven Kacherian, shot by firing squad,' it will say. Each time they put up a new one, I read the list to make sure you're not there....Each night...I try to imagine where you are. Sometimes I feel as though we're connected by an invisible thread, and other times all I feel is that something dreadful has happened to you." (134-135)

"If an Armenian in France does something dishonorable, the French say he's a dirty immigrant. If he does something good, the French take the credit and say he's French." (142)

"Telling a mother not to worry is like telling her not to breathe." (145)

As I repeated the words of the liturgy, I understood that one of the sins of the living was to be still alive when the loved one was no longer walking the earth. (149)

...and I lay in the dark as the infernal machine of my imagination began to work... (160)

Sometimes missing Zavig would hit me like an illness for which there was no medicine. (180)

When I was a schoolgirl, I had believed that happiness was a question of finding one's true love, the way it happened in so many of the novels I read. But...I realized you could love more than one person at the same time, and that marriage was not just about love. It was also about duty. (210)

He said this one word in such a way that no others were possible. (239)

"I think my heart is breaking, but I'm not sure because I can't feel a thing." Only then did I start crying. (248)

"A wave of sorrow swept over me like nausea and I closed my eyes. (249)

"When I saw those pictures in the paper, I thought, If those boys come back, those memories come with them. Both heaven and hell are here in this world." (252)

"I wonder if it's something you get over, or if you just wear it like a scar." (273)

My father said, "When you've seen what I have, where a decision to go one way or another turned out to be a matter of life or death, you give people more room to do what is human." (276)… (meer)