Review: The Gendarme by Mark T. Mustian

From this distance the deportees again appear sheeplike, the gendarmes canine in their nipping and circling.  We are shepherds, whether they accept it or not, protecting these people, moving them for their own sake.  If we were inhumane, we would have simply slaughtered them all — it would have been so much easier.  The fact that some of the young and old will expire is true of any long transport.

(from The Gendarme, pages 52-53)

The Gendarme is the first book in a long time that left me emotionally exhausted and torn, and distancing myself from the book for a few days hasn’t made my feelings any clearer.  I guess the fact that I’m still contemplating it means it was a good book.  At the very least, it was an eye-opener, as I knew nothing about the Armenian Genocide during World War I until reading The Gendarme.

The book moves back and forth in time between 1990 and 1915, with Emmett Conn, a Turkish WWI veteran experiencing flashbacks that his doctors believe are dreams triggered by a brain tumor.  Emmett knows that he was in the Ottoman army during the war and was wounded in Gallipoli, and while recuperating in England from the head injury that wiped out his memory, he met Carol, the American nurse who would become his wife and whisk him off to a new life in the States.

In the flashbacks, Emmett is Ahmet Kahn, a 17-year-old gendarme leading a caravan of Armenian deportees out of Turkey and into Syria.  Ahmet is indifferent to the suffering of the Armenians on the death march, killing and raping along the way.  But he softens after meeting a young Armenian girl, Araxie, whose different colored eyes fascinate him and whose fierce spirit compels him to go from being her almost-rapist to her protector.  These flashbacks come upon Emmett like a seizure, and they occur chronologically for the most part so that readers see the bond between him and Araxie forged and strengthened.

Mark T. Mustian covers a lot of ground in The Gendarme, from strained father-daughter relationships and an old man’s regrets to the hardships of immigrants and the treatment of the elderly.  But Emmett’s role in the Armenian Genocide and the act of remembering take center stage in this novel.  Mustian’s writing is very descriptive, to the point where some of the scenes literally made me sick to my stomach and forced me to close the book for a little bit, but I think it is important to show the horrific crimes that were committed by the Turks and how difficult it was for Emmett to regain his memory of these events.

I have such conflicted feelings about Emmett.  In one scene, he’s just an old man facing his mortality and wishing he could do right by his grandson to make up for where he failed with his daughters, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.  In the next scene, he’s a killer and a rapist, and I hated him.  Then he’s a changed young man wanting to whisk Araxie away to America, and then back to an old man wondering how Araxie’s life turned out and whether forgiveness is possible.  It all boils down to the fact that nothing is black and white, especially in love and war.  Mustian also drives home the point that whether the forced marches were an act genocide is still a controversial topic even today.

The only thing that kept me from loving The Gendarme was the slow pace.  The movement back and forth in time got tiring after awhile, and during the last quarter of the book, I grew restless and just wanted to find out what happened to Araxie.  Moreover, the ending seemed a bit far-fetched, and I didn’t like how some important details were presented.  I understand that it has to do with Emmett’s state of mind at the time, but I just didn’t think it was as strong as the rest of the book.

Still, The Gendarme is a beautifully written, gut-wrenching tale of war, love, and memory.  I don’t think it’s possible to read this novel without riding a roller coaster of emotions, and the fact that it generated such strong feelings makes it a worthwhile read in my opinion.  Mustian doesn’t hold back on the details of the Armenian Genocide, and if you’re like me, you’ll be doing some research as soon as you turn the last page.

Berkley would like to offer a copy of The Gendarme to one of my readers. To enter, simply leave a comment with your e-mail address and tell me whether you’d heard of the Armenian Genocide and why this book interests you. The publisher is shipping the book, so entries are restricted to those with U.S. addresses. This giveaway will end at 11:59 pm EST on Sunday, January 22, 2012. The winner will be chosen randomly.

**Please note that this giveaway is now closed**

Book 1 for the WWI Reading Challenge

Book 1 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

Disclosure: I received a copy of The Gendarme from Berkley/Penguin for review. I am an IndieBound affiliate and an Amazon associate.

© 2012 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.