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  • Refugee Tale Makes a Home in Your Heart

    The Daily Californian
    April 8, 2004

    Refugee Tale Makes a Home in Your Heart: Nightmarish
    Subject Matter Makes for a Reader's `Dream'

    By MEREDITH SIRES

    Micheline Aharonian Marcom
    THE DAYDREAMING BOY
    [Riverhead Books]

    We live in a day and age where Janet Jackson's `wardrobe malfunction'
    inspires an outraged public to insist on immediate drastic measures.
    The masses, deeply offended, have gone so far as to call for a federal
    investigation aimed at righting this wrong.

    That said, I am recommending Micheline Aharonian Marcom's `The
    Daydreaming Boy' not only for its literary value but also as an
    apparently much-needed prescription of perspective.

    Honestly, with the amount of sympathy generated by Vahé Tcheubjian
    as he narrates his tormented existence and recalls his troubled youth
    as a refugee from the Armenian Genocide, a reader risks emotional
    exhaustion. But before I scare anyone into picking up the newest
    Danielle Steel instead, I want to make it clear that I mean this in
    the best way possible. Like a fictional Anne Frank, Vahé doesn't
    ask, so much as force you to share his burden, understand his plight
    and eventually reevaluate a world that would allow such atrocities as
    genocide to happen. His insightful retrospective of hopeless days
    spent in a Lebanese orphanage, ironically deemed The Bird's Nest as it
    is as far from comforting as possible, is genuinely heartbreaking.

    `I understand now, in this my middle years, that they gave us God in
    the orphanage like the rich will give a coin to the corner beggar -
    it's enough to keep us quiet and continually searching the horizon,'
    Vahé narrates.

    Along with introspective analysis, the path from a grim past to a
    subtler but equally dreary present is exposed through a series of
    intermittent flashbacks. In this way, Marcom beautifully illustrates
    the transformation of a defenseless `Turk-dog' child mercilessly
    tortured by his peers into the violently lustful, though married
    Armenian man of present-day (or rather the novel's present-day, the
    1960s). Accordingly, the reader must endure an array of necessarily
    disturbing, though perhaps exceedingly graphic scenes where the victim
    becomes the aggressor. It is notable, however, that even when this is
    the case, Vahé's constant self-awareness allows him to draw
    parallels between himself and those he victimizes. From his next door
    neighbor's frightened 10-year-old Palestinian servant girl to the
    psychotic monkey at the local zoo, the novel is littered with physical
    manifestations of Vahé's inner turmoil. And through this vulnerable
    stream-of-consciousness, Malcom effectively humanizes our protagonist
    by reminding us of the motives lying behind his deviant actions.

    With such a powerful, unique style, the story, although somewhat
    gruesome, is enthralling. Short chapters are packed with poignant
    questions and such haunting memories you are almost surprised to find
    that it is not a grown-up Vahé looking up at you from the book
    jacket's back cover. As I said before, though you are hopelessly
    heartsick by the last page you still find yourself satisfied. Which is
    probably more than you can say when you put down the latest issue of
    `People.'

    http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=14836

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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