Zabelle

By: Nancy Kricorian

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

As Zabelle's family assembles for her funeral in present-day Massachusetts, it becomes clear that her children hardly knew her. But as this alternatively comic and heartbreaking novel unfolds - beginning with Zabelle's survival of the 1915 Armenian Genocide in Turkey and her subsequent emigration to America for an arranged marriage - an unforgettable character emerges.

©1998 Nancy Kricorian (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

This is shockingly relatable

I bought this book because I had read about Zabelle Panosian, an Armenian-American soprano, on social media and it is not about her at all. By the time I realized that this wasn't her story, I was too invested in the characters.

I am culturally an American who started reading about the Armenian genocide due to a family member marrying an Armenian. This is one of many books that I have purchased. While the book is fiction, I feel like "the story is true". What Zabelle the fictitious character experienced was what millions of Armenians and refugees experienced. Family relationships, interactions with Turks, finding a husband, mother-in-law, son, and new wife dynamics-- these are real and not made up.

There are no loose ends in this work. Where there are relationships, they and the issues get resolved. The reviews on Amazon state the geographical and basics, but what I want to add is that as a mom, I relate to Zabelle's observations on parenting and relationships with her children and grandchildren. There are parts of this book where I cried, and a few times I laughed so hard that my family ran to where I was and wanted to know the joke (it is stuff that moms with adult children understand.) Aspects of her shenanigans with her BFF are true enough to feel real, and could have inspired I Love Lucy skits-- her BFF's rapid responses were great. Zabelle's mother in law is an awful person, but as the book goes on, you start to understand how her circumstances during the terrible times molded her personality-- if she were alive I would be (kindly!) telling her a thing or two so her trauma response when safe could be put at ease. We learn about cultural abuse-- and why we never want to go back to the era. There are aspects of Armenian culture from the 1900s that we learn, and this is written about very well. We get taken through the rest of the century.

Now I am sitting in my dining room with that feeling that my book is over and the characters are still with me. I am a fan of Russian literature and history, and WWII-- the Armenian genocide survivors deserve to have their stories told to the world, even if, due to time, we just get information from their children and grand children. I hope that publishers will scour old Armenian books and ask families for permission to reprint them in English.

Nostalgia, pain, love, humor

This book was so cherished in my home that we kept it near the Bible. It penetrates your soul in such a lasting way. Must read, especially if Armenian or have history of ethnic injustice.