{"id":7400,"date":"2017-05-08T11:46:45","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T11:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=7400"},"modified":"2017-05-15T11:35:24","modified_gmt":"2017-05-15T11:35:24","slug":"the-orange-grove-by-larry-tremblay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=7400","title":{"rendered":"The Orange Grove by Larry Tremblay"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Translated by Sheila Fischman<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Peirene Press May 2017 <\/strong><\/p>\n

144pp, paperback, \u00a312.00<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Imagine a village, in a war zone.\u00a0 It could be anywhere.\u00a0 Imagine a family, caught up in a civil war.\u00a0 The father, Zahed, tends his orange grove.\u00a0 The mother, Tamara, raises their two sons: Ahmed and Aziz (who has a terminal illness).\u00a0 One day, a bomb from the other side of the mountains kills both grandparents.\u00a0 A man comes from the neighbouring village, talking of revenge: Zahed must sacrifice one of his sons, to punish the enemy.<\/p>\n

This tender, poetic, shocking story has at its heart both horror and transcendent gentleness.\u00a0 The two boys conspire with their mother to trick their father, who has selected healthy Ahmed as the truer sacrifice.\u00a0 Instead, it is sickly Aziz who straps on the suicide belt and goes to his destruction.<\/p>\n

How is it possible for children to make such a pact, you may ask?\u00a0 Love, for one thing; courage, curiosity.\u00a0 These boys have no adult understanding of their predicament – no proper grasp of the meaning of blowing yourself up, or of going to heaven – but they can imagine.\u00a0 They also recognize the emergency.\u00a0 They discuss this in great detail, and are resolute.\u00a0 Yet they cannot control the outcome.<\/p>\n

Years later, when Ahmed (who now calls himself Aziz) is working on the graduation show at the end of his four years of theatre training in America (it is a play about a child at the mercy of an enemy soldier), his secret sorrow bursts out.\u00a0 He experiences a breakdown of sorts, as he recalls the glorification of his brother and the shameful aftermath.\u00a0 His teacher, who has written the play, feels he has failed him.\u00a0 Then, in a stunningly theatrical denouement, Ahmed\/Aziz appears, speaking to the audience on behalf of all children of war.<\/p>\n

Montreal-based author Larry Tremblay is a theatre director and actor as well as a novelist and short-story writer whose work has been shortlisted for many international awards.\u00a0 In this fine translation from the French by Sheila Fischman, his writing stands comparison with that of Amos Oz, whose sensitivity to the effects of war on individuals has distinguished similar questioning texts.<\/p>\n

Tremblay packs into a small number of pages the feelings of multitudes.\u00a0 It is one of the strongest arguments for peace that this reviewer has seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

Montreal-based author Larry Tremblay is a theatre director and actor as well as a novelist and short-story writer whose work has been shortlisted for many international awards. In this fine translation from the French by Sheila Fischman, his writing stands comparison with that of Amos Oz, whose sensitivity to the effects of war on individuals has distinguished similar questioning texts […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7402,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7400\/revisions\/7402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}