The Gimmicks

October 21, 2019
McCormick’s rambling debut novel (after the story collection Desert Boys) shows the continued influence of the Armenian genocide of 1915 far into the 20th century. The author dramatizes how it affects three teenage characters growing up in a village in Soviet Armenia in the 1970s: Ruben Petrosian, a teenager who lives to play backgammon; Mina Bagossian, his gaming rival; and Avo Gregoryan, Ruben’s cousin, who’s bigger than most kids and comes to live with the Petrosian family after the death of his parents in an industrial accident. Despite being opposites, both physically and temperamentally, the two cousins become as close as brothers, just as Avo and Mina fall in love. Ruben and Avo are eventually recruited by a secret Armenian liberation group that seeks vengeance for the 1915 genocide. Forced to leave Mina behind, Avo is sent to America, where he grows disillusioned with the cause and becomes—what else, given his size—a professional wrestler. In 1989, Mina contacts Avo’s former wrestling manager to find out what happened to her one-time love. The novel covers much ground, geographically and historically, but never fully pulls together its disparate story elements. Still, there are enough secrets, lies, and betrayals to keep the reader turning the pages.

November 1, 2019
Two cousins emigrate from Armenia, finding their destinies in backgammon and pro wrestling. You needn't be well schooled in either sport to appreciate the debut novel by McCormick (Desert Boys: Stories, 2016); both serve mainly as metaphors for the mix of smarts, luck, and fakery that are essential to every immigrant survival story. In the early 1970s, cousins Ruben and Avo were as close as brothers in a rural Armenian town that promises nothing but endless reprosecutions of the country's genocidal past. One escape hatch is competitive backgammon, and the game has a prodigy in Mina, a young woman who earns a spot in a tournament in Paris. If Avo knocks down her teacher, killing him, was it an accident, or was Avo angling for a seat on the flight? Regardless, Ruben finds his way to France while Avo heads to California; both become involved in secret terrorist plots against Armenia's Turkish aggressors. A falling-out with those terrorists gets Avo a scar on his forehead and a gig in pro wrestling, where he's known as the Brow Beater. The busy plotting (Avo's former manager narrates chapters that move the story into the late 1980s) makes the novel a bit sodden, and anybody looking for lively depictions of wrestling bouts will be disappointed. McCormick is more focused on pro wrestling's notion of kayfabe, of keeping up appearances to advance a narrative, a sustained theme in Ruben's and Avo's lives outside of Armenia. On that front, he fully inhabits the cousins' lives with passion and Slavic dark humor. The truth, McCormick writes "is the only thing that can pin a heart open or seal it off forever." The pathos of this story comes from the struggle of its protagonists to do either. A busy but well-constructed tale about new lands and the ghosts of an old one.

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