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Book Review: Orphan's Inheritance

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  • Book Review: Orphan's Inheritance

    Kirkus Reviews (Print)
    February 1, 2015, Sunday

    ORHAN'S INHERITANCE

    FICTION


    In Ohanesian's debut novel, a Turkish man confronts secrets about his
    family and his country's history and is faced with an impossible
    choice: Should the past remain in the past, or should all stories,
    even the most painful, come to light? When his grandfather dies, Orhan
    returns from Istanbul to the small village where he grew up and the
    contentious relationship he shares with his father; the tension is
    exacerbated when his grandfather's will reveals that he has left the
    family dye business to Orhan and the family house to a strange woman
    in an Armenian-American nursing home. While the rest of the nursing
    home prepares for an exhibit called "Bearing Witness: An Exhibit About
    Memory and Identity," Seda at first refuses to talk to Orhan about her
    connection to his grandfather.

    When she finally unburdens herself, giving voice to a harrowing tale
    of unimaginable sacrifice, he must decide what to do with this new
    information about his family and about the horrors of his country's
    history. In a complex balance, Ohanesian often condemns language as
    insufficient to convey these stories of loss and pain, while at the
    same time recognizing that telling the story can be cathartic and even
    universally necessary. The heart of the novel seems to suggest that
    "[t]here is only what is, what happened. The words come much later,
    corrupting everything with meaning." There are deep reflections on
    guilt, both collective and individual, and the power of memory to
    destroy or to heal. By rejecting the power of the written word but
    also, in writing a novel, relying on it to be powerful, Ohanesian
    explores both sides of this argument about bearing witness to Turkey's
    terrible legacy. A novel that delves into the darkest corners of human
    history and emerges with a tenuous sense of hope.

    Publication Date: 2015-04-07
    Publisher: Algonquin
    Stage: Adult
    ISBN: 978-1-61620-374-0
    Price: $25.95
    Author: Ohanesian, Aline

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