On a Friday afternoon in the remote mountain village of Maran, middle-aged peasant Anatolia Sevoyants feeds the chickens, sets out her grave clothes and lies down to die.

It is her fate, she thinks. After all, she has been bleeding profusely for two days now.

But before Anatolia can breathe her last, she is interrupted by a surprise visitor. Vasily, the widowed blacksmith, has come armed with a new scythe and a marriage proposal. Desperate to get rid of him, she says yes.

This morbidly comic scene marks the start of Russian author Narine Abgaryan's novel, which details the quirks and histories of Maran's inhabitants.

The novel, first published in Russia five years ago, won the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award, the country's most prestigious literary prize.

Abgaryan, 49, is of Armenian descent and has written children's books. She has said Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years Of Solitude is her favourite novel; its influence on her work is clear.

Like Marquez's Macondo, the Armenian village of Maran is almost completely isolated from the outside world and its inhabitants become more entrenched in their ways as they age.

As one outsider to the village puts it: "It's as if you're made of stone. I think everything's stone in Maran. Houses. Trees. People."

Maran's inhabitants exhibit a stony, unflinching acceptance of the disasters - landslide, war and famine - that sweep over the village and slowly whittle away at the population.

And, like stone, the villagers are resistant to change. Even bread made with yeast is met with deep suspicion by a population used to eating unleavened flatbreads.

Magical realism plays a key role in both novels, with Maran's villagers described as "a rational superstitious people who nevertheless believed in dreams and signs".

These similarities between the two books mean that Three Apples Fell From The Sky can come across as somewhat derivative.

But the charm of this story does not lie in its originality, but in the simple way in which it is told.

Unlike Macondo, where the unchanging nature of the village eventually leads to stagnation and desolation, Abgaryan's work ends on a note of hope.

Those familiar with Armenian fables, which often close with the saying "three apples fell from heaven", may have guessed this from the start. Anatolia and Vasily, like many fairy-tale characters, find their happily ever after.

If you like this, read: The House At The Edge Of Night by Catherine Banner (Windmill Books, 2016, $28.70, available at opentrolley.com.sg), a multi-generational family saga set on a tiny island off the coast of Italy.