News and reviews
“New book looks at how Dover – and a genocide – shaped author’s life”
Foster’s Daily Democrat story by Paul Briand
Native son John Christie has written a book that is an adventure story wrapped in a memoir, with the Garrison City at its heart. The adventure story is layered mostly around his Nana – his maternal grandmother, Guelina “Rose” Hovsepian Banaian – who settled in Dover after escaping the Armenian genocide in Turkey in 1909…
The Baltimore Catechism – familiar to every Catholic kid from the 60s and 70s – asks: “Who made us?” The answer is: “God made us.” Christie pursues the existential answer pragmatically with the investigation, reporting and writing skills of his successful livelihood in newspapers. The eye for detail, understanding nuance, the meaning of what’s said – and unsaid – are all evident in the book.
“To be a great writer, revise, revise, & revise”
Interview with John Christie in Authority Magazine
What is the main empowering lesson you want your readers to take away after finishing your book?
I open up one chapter with this quote from a Van Morrison song: “Don’t ever stray/stray from own ones.” The lesson I learned is the price you pay when you forget where you came from and neglect honoring those who made you. My book taught me there is no deeper, no stronger virtue for me than loyalty.
Book Review: The Prince of Wentworth Street
Review in Armenian Weekly by Christopher Atamian
Christie belongs to that group of American immigrant children who were the first to attend college and who all carved a piece of the so-called American Dream for themselves. The Prince of Wentworth Street is ultimately a piece of immigrant history that transcends the Armenian Genocide. At times Christie’s prose becomes poetic, like when he describes life in the early 1960s: “All of that—the blood pooling on the jungle floor in Vietnam and staining a pink dress in Texas and spilling onto a balcony in Memphis—was about to enter our consciousness. But that night we were just on a crazy lark. Like Dylan Thomas playing Indians, we were aware only of ourselves.”
“Not only was this a phenomenal read, it was an education”
Review in the Feathered Quill by Diane Lunsford
What Christie discovers early on in his project is the truth; a truth that is foundational to his memoir. His story ebbs and flows in waves of melancholy … and anger. The resounding revelation throughout is that his life is a part of an egregious tragedy against people who were blood relations to him.
“A fascinating, moving memoir”
Column by John Ronan in The Gloucester Times
There is only one topic to write about this spring: isolation in lockdown…A few of my escapes are below, diversions I’ve used to keep from going crazy…Film and other cures come in two categories: High-Brow and Somewhat-High-Brow…In the HB slot: “The Prince of Wentworth Street,” by local author and former Gloucester Daily Times reporter John Christie. This is a fascinating, moving memoir about growing up in New Hampshire and John’s Irish-Armenian roots, including a direct link to the Armenian genocide.
“….A love letter to a lost Armenia, to ancestors who were butchered in fields, and to those who, like his "Nana,"survived”
Story by Joann Mackenzie in the Gloucester Times
Christie, who is half-Irish, originally intended his book to be about both sides of his immigrant family, but the desire to be a voice for the Armenians lost to the genocide took over the story. In it, the author turns his investigative reporter's skills on his Armenian grandmother's life to find meaning of his own American life.