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GENOCIDE CENTER OF NOVEL
Sarasota Herald Tribune (Florida)
August 5, 2012 Sunday
by Susan Rife
A look at the comments section underneath a review of Chris Bohjalian's
new novel, "The Sandcastle Girls," in the Washington Post makes it
quite clear that the controversy over the nearly 100-year-old Armenian
genocide is far from over.
The neutral terminology would be the "Turkish-Armenian conflict,"
suggests one writer.
But for Bohjalian, there's no question as to who were the losers in
the Ottoman Empire in early World War I.
His new novel, "The Sandcastle Girls," draws on his grandparents'
experiences in Turkey and Syria in 1915, and it is a story both
excruciating and exhilarating.
The novel shuttles back and forth between modern-day Laura Petrosian,
a 40-something writer of women's fiction, and 1915 Aleppo, Syria,
where Laura's grandparents met and fell in love.
Elizabeth Endicott is newly graduated from Mount Holyoke College,
speaks a bit of Turkish and Armenian and has taken a crash course in
nursing when she and her father head to Aleppo from Boston as part of
a humanitarian mission to deliver food and medical aid to Armenian
refugees, who turn out be be entirely women and children who have
been marched across the desert to "relocation camps." The men are
nearly entirely gone.
The Endicotts' first exposure to the refugees is stunningly graphic.
As they walk to the central courtyard of Aleppo, they encounter a
"staggering column" of hundreds of naked women and children that
Elizabeth first takes to be Africans, so blackened are they by
the sun. They have been herded across the desert for weeks; the
atrocities committed against them are described in grim detail by
Bohjalian: Group beheadings treated like sport by sword-wielding
Turkish soldiers on horseback; women impaled on spikes like some sort
of obscene desert plant.
In tending to the needs of the refugees, Elizabeth befriends one of
their number, Nevart, and the 8-year-old orphan she is protecting,
Hatoun, who has not spoken a word since witnessing her mother's
decapitation.
And then Elizabeth meets Armen, an engineer working with
German troops. Armen has lost his wife and infant daughter in the
catastrophe. When he and Elizabeth begin to fall in love, Armen leaves
Syria to join British forces elsewhere in the Middle East.
Bohjalian alternates the horrors of the genocide with the love story
between Elizabeth and Armen, and then shifts to the story of Laura
Petrosian's digging into her grandparents' pasts.
When a friend calls to tell her that a photograph of Petrosian's
grandmother is on display in Boston, she is startled to find an image
not of her grandmother, but of another woman who shares Laura's name.
Who is she, and how did her image come to be part of the collection?
What secrets did Armen and Elizabeth bring to the United States?
"The Sandcastle Girls" is Bohjalian's 14th novel, and he's at the
top of his game with this deeply personal story. The narration by
Cassandra Campbell and Alison Fraser is spot-on, with Laura given
a breezy, 21st-century first-person tone and Elizabeth and Armen's
story told in the third person, presented in a somber, riveting style.
Sarasota Herald Tribune (Florida)
August 5, 2012 Sunday
by Susan Rife
A look at the comments section underneath a review of Chris Bohjalian's
new novel, "The Sandcastle Girls," in the Washington Post makes it
quite clear that the controversy over the nearly 100-year-old Armenian
genocide is far from over.
The neutral terminology would be the "Turkish-Armenian conflict,"
suggests one writer.
But for Bohjalian, there's no question as to who were the losers in
the Ottoman Empire in early World War I.
His new novel, "The Sandcastle Girls," draws on his grandparents'
experiences in Turkey and Syria in 1915, and it is a story both
excruciating and exhilarating.
The novel shuttles back and forth between modern-day Laura Petrosian,
a 40-something writer of women's fiction, and 1915 Aleppo, Syria,
where Laura's grandparents met and fell in love.
Elizabeth Endicott is newly graduated from Mount Holyoke College,
speaks a bit of Turkish and Armenian and has taken a crash course in
nursing when she and her father head to Aleppo from Boston as part of
a humanitarian mission to deliver food and medical aid to Armenian
refugees, who turn out be be entirely women and children who have
been marched across the desert to "relocation camps." The men are
nearly entirely gone.
The Endicotts' first exposure to the refugees is stunningly graphic.
As they walk to the central courtyard of Aleppo, they encounter a
"staggering column" of hundreds of naked women and children that
Elizabeth first takes to be Africans, so blackened are they by
the sun. They have been herded across the desert for weeks; the
atrocities committed against them are described in grim detail by
Bohjalian: Group beheadings treated like sport by sword-wielding
Turkish soldiers on horseback; women impaled on spikes like some sort
of obscene desert plant.
In tending to the needs of the refugees, Elizabeth befriends one of
their number, Nevart, and the 8-year-old orphan she is protecting,
Hatoun, who has not spoken a word since witnessing her mother's
decapitation.
And then Elizabeth meets Armen, an engineer working with
German troops. Armen has lost his wife and infant daughter in the
catastrophe. When he and Elizabeth begin to fall in love, Armen leaves
Syria to join British forces elsewhere in the Middle East.
Bohjalian alternates the horrors of the genocide with the love story
between Elizabeth and Armen, and then shifts to the story of Laura
Petrosian's digging into her grandparents' pasts.
When a friend calls to tell her that a photograph of Petrosian's
grandmother is on display in Boston, she is startled to find an image
not of her grandmother, but of another woman who shares Laura's name.
Who is she, and how did her image come to be part of the collection?
What secrets did Armen and Elizabeth bring to the United States?
"The Sandcastle Girls" is Bohjalian's 14th novel, and he's at the
top of his game with this deeply personal story. The narration by
Cassandra Campbell and Alison Fraser is spot-on, with Laura given
a breezy, 21st-century first-person tone and Elizabeth and Armen's
story told in the third person, presented in a somber, riveting style.