The Gimmicks by Chris McCormick
Synopsis: This exuberant, wholly original novel begins in Kirovakan, Armenia, in 1971. Ruben Petrosian is a serious, solitary young man who cares about two things: mastering the game of backgammon to beat his archrival, Mina, and studying the history of his ancestors. Ruben grieves the victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, a crime still denied by the descendants of its perpetrators, and dreams of vengeance. When his orphaned cousin, Avo, comes to live with his family, Ruben’s life is transformed. Gregarious and physically enormous, with a distinct unibrow that becomes his signature, Avo is instantly beloved.
He is everything Ruben is not, yet the two form a bond they swear never to break. But their paths diverge when Ruben vanishes—drafted into an extremist group that will stop at nothing to make Turkey acknowledge the genocide. Unmoored by Ruben’s disappearance, Avo and Mina grow close in his absence. But fate brings the cousins together once more, when Ruben secretly contacts Avo, convincing him to leave Mina and join the extremists—a choice that will dramatically alter the course of their lives. Left to unravel the threads of this story is Terry “Angel Hair” Krill, a veteran of both the US Navy and the funhouse world of professional wrestling, whose life intersects with Avo, Ruben, and Mina’s in surprising and devastating ways. Told through alternating perspectives, The Gimmicks is a masterpiece of storytelling.
Review: Avo and Ruben. Enough said. It was by far one of the most depressing tragic stories I have ever read. How the relationship between these two men who started out with a foundation of trust, loyalty, and appreciation of that like brothers end up so different due to war trauma and ideologies. The transition of Ruben in contrast to Avo... absolutely heartbreaking the decisions that had to be made from both characters.
Mina, the woman you are. That's all I have to say.
The writing prose was SO hard to keep up with. It was jumping narratives, timelines, locations. Everything was constantly switching. There were SO many themes packed into one novel that it did not feel cohesive AT ALL. It was intimidating and difficult. The big focus of the book being about wrestling was so confusing at first too and took forever to get used to. This book, in some ways, tested my patience and I had to spend time researching a lot of the history, wrestling terminology and so on to really get an immersive feel into it.
I'm not the best at grasping concepts with an inconsistent structure. If this had more of a cohesive writing style, I probably would've enjoyed it more.