Dreams of Bread and Fire: A Novel - Hardcover

Nancy Kricorian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802117430 ISBN 13: 9780802117434

Publisher: Grove Pr, 2003

Synopsis

Ani Silver is a young American woman whose half-Jewish, half-Armenian heritage seems a mere footnote to her own identity. But when the dark shadows of history insinuate themselves into her otherwise peaceful life, she is propelled 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.
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 the childhood home she shared with her widowed mother and Armenian grandparents. After college, Ani leaves for a year in Paris, taking along her boyfriend's pledge of fidelity and the promise of their future together. When she receives a letter from him ending their relationship, she falls into a series of romantic misadventures. It is not long before Ani reconnects with a childhood friend, an elusive and intriguing character whose preoccupation with the Armenian heritage they share provides Ani with a new connection to her identity - even as she begins to suspect that he has a secret, and dangerous, identity himself.

About this title

Reviews

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.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Working in Paris as an au pair, Ani Silver is a student striving to forget an unfaithful man who filled her head with false promises. Adding to her misery is the nonexistent link between her paternal relatives and the melting pot of American and Armenian customs that complicate her identity. Her Jewish father was killed in an accident when she was just a child and his family never acknowledged her birth, nor did they forgive him for marrying Ani's mother. Love and heritage meet at the crossroads when Ani runs into a childhood friend in Paris who is heavily involved in the Armenian cause and holds a mysterious job. Perplexed by his peculiar behavior, Ani realizes how little she knows about the people she loves most. She has no history for her father, her grandparents are tightlipped about the horrors they suffered in the old country, her mother is changing daily, and the man she loves is an enigma. Ani Silver is a young woman en route to self-discovery through her own devices. Elsa Gaztambide
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Pr
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802117430
• ISBN 13: 9780802117434
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 233