The Burning Heart of the World

An Armenian American woman’s childhood memories of the Lebanese Civil War come roaring back on 9/11 in the lyrical latest from Kricorian (All the Light There Was). Vera Serinossian, a collage artist, is about to begin a marriage counseling session with her husband on the Upper West Side when they learn about the attack on the World Trade Center. Vera, whose ethnically Armenian family emigrated from Beirut during the war when she was 12, races to pick up the couple’s young twins, who had just started school that week. Kricorian then flashes back to Vera’s wartime experiences, showing the inherent strangeness of living under siege. The war brings about unsettling changes: Vera becomes a go-between for a teenage friend and her much older paramour, while a bunch of local boys, including Vera’s older brother, start collecting bullet casings. As conditions continue to deteriorate, Vera’s mother pushes for the family to leave the country, but her paternal grandmother, a survivor of the Armenian genocide, refuses to flee (“Exile is a burning shirt I will never wear again,” she declares). Much of the narrative is devoted to flashbacks, which effectively inform Vera’s difficulty in dealing with the aftermath of the terrorist attack and her intense fear that there will be more bombings in New York. It’s an impactful story of trauma. (Apr.)