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yy_reads's review against another edition
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.5
Somehow, despite having every other work by Abgaryan, we don't have this book at home! Luckily the library had it as an ebook, albeit only in translation. The book is lovely, warm and comforting despite dealing with some heavy subjects. And the food descriptions!! I want to come back to this book and reread it during the winter, it's incredibly cozy.
The English translation has some awkward parts that could have been done differently - mostly idioms like царь-птица or море-океан, which sound fantastical when translated literally/word-for-word. It does work okay within the magical realism of the setting but I could tell while reading that the original did not have quite the same tone in those parts. I did really enjoy the lyricism and rhythm of the prose, the translator did a great job there, and I would recommend this translation to anyone who cannot read the original.
The English translation has some awkward parts that could have been done differently - mostly idioms like царь-птица or море-океан, which sound fantastical when translated literally/word-for-word. It does work okay within the magical realism of the setting but I could tell while reading that the original did not have quite the same tone in those parts. I did really enjoy the lyricism and rhythm of the prose, the translator did a great job there, and I would recommend this translation to anyone who cannot read the original.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Genocide
Minor: Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Sexual assault, and War
Famine (moderate), starvation (minor or moderate), the Armenian Genocide (recurring mentions throughout the book - not easily avoidable)adazzlinggirl's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
vassa's review against another edition
4.0
Снова примиряюсь с жизнью. Есть всё-таки нечто особенно в таких личных книгах, и сердце сжимается от тоски по чужим воспоминаниям.
morganwc's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
5.0
siria's review against another edition
3.0
Three Apples Fell from the Sky is set in a small mountaintop Armenian village at an indeterminate period in time—isolated as Maran is, the distant war mentioned could be any one of a number of 20th-century conflicts. Narine Abgaryan tells a series of interlocking, multi-generational and magical realism-tinged stories about the inhabitants of Maran which slide back and forth in time. There are some lovely passages, and I did wonder if there were layers of meaning here that I just wasn't picking up on because I don't have enough knowledge of the social/historical/political contexts and tensions. (Abgaryan is an Armenian living and working in Putin's Russia.) But for me, despite all of the tragedies recounted here, this book was a bit too sentimental. Maybe it doesn't ever quite become what you could technically class as twee, but the ending, in which a 58-year-old woman's (first?) epic bout of menstruation leads her to conceive and have a child for the first time, with her 70-something husband, all of whose children by his first marriage had died , toed up to the line for me.