Name: The sandcastle girls
Rating: 3.75 (8 reviews)
ISBN: 9780385534796

Chris Bohjalian

"Parallel stories of a woman who falls in love with an Armenian soldier during the Armenian Genocide and a modern-day New Yorker prompted to rediscover her Armenian past"--

The sandcastle girls

Jeni Enjaian

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.

From the bestselling author of Midwives, here is a sweeping historical love story that probes the depths of love, family, and secrets amid the Armenian Genocide during WWI. When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Aleppo, Syria, she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. It’s 1915, and Elizabeth has volunteered to help deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian Genocide during the First World War. There she meets Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. After leaving Aleppo and traveling into Egypt to join the British Army, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, realizing that he has fallen in love with the wealthy young American. Years later, their American granddaughter, Laura, embarks on a journey back through her family’s history, uncovering a story of love, loss—and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.

The sandcastle girls

Reviews

Highlights