People Who Are Always with Me
Author
150,000 copies sold
Full French translation
English sample available
People Who Are Always with Me is a story of several generations of one family told through thirteen novellas through the eyes of a child. This is the story of people who have gone through hardships but managed to preserve kindness, humanity and love in their hearts.
It is not so often that you come across books that give you goosebumps, lulling with a leisurely narration of the simplest things that surround us every day. The novel People Who Are Always with Me is just that, giving a positive charge and faith in the best.
In fact, Narine Abgaryan wrote an autobiography – a story about a little Girl, next to whom there is a large family, close-knit, ready to support and hide from adversity, to point the right way.
The novel People Who Are Always with Me is a world, through the eyes of a child, unclouded by problems and hardships, colorful and bright. This child already knows what life and death are, but perceives it as regularities, knows how cruel human rumor can be, which can easily lead to hatred. But the Girl is in no hurry, because the whole world belongs to her and offers her thousands of roads.
Narine Abgaryan draws touching pictures from childhood: a trip to the mountains, a wedding, admonitions from adults. All these incidents are viewed through the prism of the child’s worldview, conclusions are drawn, remembered in order to one day be in demand in a future life.
The narrative sometimes jumps from place to place, returns to continue what was started, but this does not prevent the reader from absorbing the beautiful and warm story of the Girl’s life. It is good to read such a novel on a rainy autumn evening, wrapped in a blanket, but to feel a different warmth – the warmth of Narine Abgaryan’s soul, the warmth of a long-gone childhood.
This book is infinitely comfortable, able to heal mental wounds, relax and pacify. Such works must be read in order to remember what spiritual beauty is, what the beauty of the world around us is, which we begin to forget about in our endless haste and pursuit of ghosts.
Stop for a moment and plunge into the world of childhood with the novel People Who Are Always with Me. It is addressed to a wide audience of readers, regardless of age and literary preferences.
Abgaryan’s warmth in portraying everyday twentieth-century reality, such as it is, in Berd, Armenia, feels like a unique form of writerly magic.
— Lizok’s Bookshelf
Book details
AST
Novel/Novellas, 2014
280 pp
Rights sold
French Macha Publication (now available)
Bulgarian Labirint
Armenian Oracle
Lithuanian Balto
Macedonian Muza
Slovak Artforum