{ "item_title" : "The Gimmicks", "item_author" : [" Chris McCormick "], "item_description" : "The Gimmicks is a gorgeous epic that astounds with its scope and beauty. With empathy and humor, McCormick unravels the ties between brotherhood and betrayal, love and abandonment, and the fictions we create to live with the pain of the past. This novel will blow you away. --Brit Bennett, New York Times bestselling author of The MothersSet in the waning years of the Cold War, a stunning debut novel about a trio of young Armenians that moves from the Soviet Union, across Europe, to Southern California, and at its center, one of the most tragic cataclysms in twentieth-century history--the Armenian Genocide--whose traumatic reverberations will have unexpected consequences on all three lives.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. Chris McCormick brilliantly illuminates the impact of history and injustice on ordinary lives and challenges us to confront the spectacle of violence and the specter of its aftermath.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/06/290/856/0062908561_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "27.99", "online_price" : "27.99", "our_price" : "27.99", "club_price" : "27.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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The Gimmicks

Chris McCormick’s tightly knit second novel begins and ends in anonymity. The opening scene finds an Irish professional wrestler searching for a pub, and the final scene is haunted by the shell of a character—bookends that are a testament to the novel’s timeless, universal message about the fine line between performance and authenticity.

In the 1970s, Ruben and Avo are Armenian cousins-of-cousins, but they’ve considered themselves brothers ever since Avo, a lovable giant, defended the bookish Ruben from classmates’ taunting. Then Ruben’s backgammon opponent, Mina, falls for affable Avo. When Ruben and Mina leave for a backgammon competition in Paris, Avo fears he’ll never see them again. Ruben disappears into France and beyond, and Avo becomes a professional wrestler in America. The triumvirate do eventually meet one another again, under circumstances none of them could have imagined. Many years later, Mina seeks out Terry, Avo’s American pro-wrestling manager, to fill in the gaps of Avo’s mysterious past.

The novel takes place in the generation after the Armenian genocide, incorporating Turkey’s denial of the event into its themes of deception and identity. Chapters toggle among the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, reinforcing time’s circularity. It becomes clear that whether or not historical atrocities are acknowledged, they inevitably shape the past, present and future.

For all the literal and figurative backstabbing throughout the book, there’s plenty of caring, too. The characters’ eccentricities—Terry’s love of cats, Avo’s fanny pack, Ruben’s stiff suit, Mina’s luck—set them apart as much as they draw them to each other. The story plays with the tension between our differences and similarities while also questioning what’s genuine and what’s an act.

McCormick’s facility for metaphor encourages us to keep asking questions and pushing boundaries. Through these creative associations, The Gimmicks stretches the reader’s imagination and capacity for empathy. 

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ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Chris McCormick discusses the big questions of The Gimmicks and his lifelong fascination with professional wrestling.