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The Gimmicks: A Novel Audiobook
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“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 Mothers
Set 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.
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“More than compelling enough in print, The Gimmicks finds extra dimension in audio, with Will M. Watt, Mike Ortego, and Mary Jane Wells putting in performances that are wry, warm and disarming. Watt’s and Wells’ subtle accents contrast effectively with Ortego’s straightforward American one, making for an entertaining listen.”
— Paste magazine (audio review)
Quotes
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“The Gimmicks is a gorgeous epic that astounds with its scope and beauty.”
— Brit Bennett, New York Times bestselling author -
"[The Gimmicks‘s]…really about history—personal and collective—and it’s rooted in horrors from more than a century ago that are still making news today.”
— New York Times -
“The novel covers much ground, geographically and historically, but…there are enough secrets, lies, and betrayals to keep the reader turning the pages.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“The Gimmicks knocked me back and then knocked me over. A fascinating and bold debut novel that more than answers the promise of his terrific first collection of stories, Desert Boys. A wide-ranging, globe-spanning, and yet beautifully intimate book.”
— Peter Orner, author of Maggie Brown & Others
Awards
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A Paste Magazine Pick of Best Audiobooks of the Month
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About Chris McCormick
Chris McCormick is the author of a collection of stories, Desert Boys, winner of the 2017 Stonewall Book Award. Born in 1987 and raised on the California side of the Mojave Desert, he is a graduate of the University of Michigan MFA program and now lives and teaches in Minnesota.
About the Narrators
Will M. Watt was determined not to be one of those penniless artists that his parents warned him about, so decided not to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. Fate had other ideas, however, and that dream ruthlessly pursued him instead. A decade later, and Will now makes a living recording audiobooks, commercials, and video games, but admits that he’ll never be much good at writing about himself in the third person. Will’s accidental stumble into the world of voice acting has led him from a humble bedroom studio in Oxford, England, to the bright lights of New York City where he now lives with his two four legged roommates, Sara and Rachel.
Mary Jane Wells (a.k.a. McAllister Lee) is a British actress, writer, voice-over artist, and Earphones Award and Audie Award–winning narrator. A graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, she held a recurring role on the BBC’s Half Moon Investigates and narrated the BBC Three television show My Children, which won a Scottish BAFTA.