The Sandcastle Girls

Certainly feels autobiographical, and according to the author there are elements. I was a bit put off by the back and forth between the present and the past, but after listening to the reasons from the author (to give you a break from the atrocities of the Armenian Genocide) I am more accepting.

My low expectations were blown away by this book. As usual, I read a few reviews of the book just after I start reading. These reviews helped lower my expectations of the book. I'm glad it was that way and not the reverse. As the great-granddaughter of Armenian immigrants, the "Armenian-ness" of the book appealed to me strongly. The descriptions of the culture from the food to the behaviors resonated with my own experience. This book makes me wish, again, that I knew more of my great-grandparents' stories. (Like most Armenians of that generation they shared little if any information about their past.) I also liked the name that the granddaughter gave to the Genocide. Unfortunately I don't remember the exact wording and don't have the book in front of me at the moment. It was something like The Outrage/Horror No One Knew About. The biggest thing that kept me from giving this book 5 stars was its seeming lack of coherence. I think that the story did need to be told from the preset and the past but Bohjalian dropped the ball on smoothing the transitions and on distribution of narrative text between the two. I applaud his effort though. This book, though far from perfect, has a far wider reach than any textbook about the Genocide or biography of a survivor. So many reviewers mentioned that they had no knowledge of the Genocide before reading this book. For that reason, I strongly recommend it. The 100th anniversary of Remembrance Day, April 24, 2015 (the unofficial "start" to the Genocide) is less than a year away.