The Sandcastle Girls (Vintage Contemporaries)
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of The Flight Attendant, 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.
Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness!
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.
Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness!
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Community Reviews
A modern day woman learns of the love story and horror kept quiet in the history of her grandparents. We discover along with her of how her grandmother Elizabeth Endicott traveled to Aleppo, Syria with her own father to offer relief to Armenian refugees. What they find when they arrive is a genocide in progress as Turks and Syrians attempt to erase the Armenian race from the earth. While in Aleppo, Elizabeth meets Armenian engineer Armen and falls in love. The novel follows their stories as their modern day granddaughter unravels their past decades later.
I am ashamed to admit that I was unaware of the Armenian genocide, which resulted in the deaths of between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians between the years of 1915 and 1923. It's heartbreaking to think of what happened to these people, the suffering of those who died, and the haunting memories carried by those who survived.
I thought the format of this book was an interesting concept. Instead of simply telling the story of Elizabeth and Armen, to have it told through their granddaughter as she discovers what happened to them in their youth. Elizabeth and Armen were very believable. The granddaughter was sort of forgettable-- a bit of a quiet voice narrating and guiding the story, but Elizabeth and Armen were meant to be the stars of the story, and I found them to be real and solid and moving. They brought the horrors of the Armenian genocide to life.
Caught up in Elizabeth and Armen's story are the stories of many other characters, including an Armenian refugee by the name of Nevart and her young charge Hatoun. Two survivors of the genocide (at least they survived during the period that Elizabeth knew them), their own story is beautiful and stirring and heart wrenching. And then there is the underlying story of the images of the refugees, captured on film plates and being smuggled to safety to assure that they survive the slaughter, to reveal to the world the truth of what is going in Aleppo. And let us not forget the tragic story of Armen's wife Karine and infant daughter.
My final word: This story was a mixture of sweetness, tragedy and horror. Elizabeth and Armen were characters that I could really care about. This novel wraps a history lesson up in an intriguing story. A robust novel full of flavors, and I will undoubtedly be tasting of author Chris Bohjalian's other works. Definitely recommended!
I am ashamed to admit that I was unaware of the Armenian genocide, which resulted in the deaths of between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians between the years of 1915 and 1923. It's heartbreaking to think of what happened to these people, the suffering of those who died, and the haunting memories carried by those who survived.
I thought the format of this book was an interesting concept. Instead of simply telling the story of Elizabeth and Armen, to have it told through their granddaughter as she discovers what happened to them in their youth. Elizabeth and Armen were very believable. The granddaughter was sort of forgettable-- a bit of a quiet voice narrating and guiding the story, but Elizabeth and Armen were meant to be the stars of the story, and I found them to be real and solid and moving. They brought the horrors of the Armenian genocide to life.
Caught up in Elizabeth and Armen's story are the stories of many other characters, including an Armenian refugee by the name of Nevart and her young charge Hatoun. Two survivors of the genocide (at least they survived during the period that Elizabeth knew them), their own story is beautiful and stirring and heart wrenching. And then there is the underlying story of the images of the refugees, captured on film plates and being smuggled to safety to assure that they survive the slaughter, to reveal to the world the truth of what is going in Aleppo. And let us not forget the tragic story of Armen's wife Karine and infant daughter.
My final word: This story was a mixture of sweetness, tragedy and horror. Elizabeth and Armen were characters that I could really care about. This novel wraps a history lesson up in an intriguing story. A robust novel full of flavors, and I will undoubtedly be tasting of author Chris Bohjalian's other works. Definitely recommended!
I have never read the author before and really enjoyed this book. I will need to go and search out some of his other titles.
I really, really liked Chris Bohjalian's Midwife, and this (the Armenian genocide)is a time period that I wanted to know more about. I really wanted to love this book, but in the end, it was only a so-so read. He uses the same literary device as in Midwife of telling part of the story in the past, and part in present day. This time there are two different narrators ~ the present day author, and her grandmother. But it didn't really add anything to the story, and in some ways I felt that it was a distraction. There was supposedly some big, deep, dark secret to the grandparents' story, but the build up was stilted -- I knew they survived because of the present day narrator. The story did illustrate the horrors of the Armenian genocide, but it failed to really move me. In the end, I felt that almost all of the characters were rather self-centered and not really very likable.
Wow. I was in a class in college with a young woman who was Armenian and told me there had been a genocide. That was around 1999 or 2000. I honestly had never heard of it up until that point, and until the Kardashians came along, never heard about it again. I still didn't know why, or the facts or details. This book is a historical fiction novel; so while the characters are not real, the events are based on real history. I don't understand why this isn't taught in World History. As the book asks, how do 1.5 million people disappear and no one knows about it? I'm so thankful Chris Bohjalian wrote this book and I highly recommend it to anyone high school age or older. Yes, it's graphic, but if they're teaching about the Haloucaust and slavery, they should be teaching this as well.
For all that this is a book that centers on a genocide, it's not very compelling. There are two stories told in parallel, neither of which I found particularly engaging. The primary story is the one that takes place during the 1915 Armenian genocide. It's the story of Elizabeth, a recent Mount Holyoke graduate who travels to Aleppo with her father on a mission of humanitarian relief (although in her father's case it seems to have more to do with making sure his money is being responsibly spent). In Aleppo, Elizabeth meets Armen, an Armenian engineer. Although Armen presumes that his wife and daughter are dead, victims of the Turkish transportation, he is in Aleppo hoping to find someone who accompanied them across the desert and can tell him what exactly happened to them. This might have made Armen a tragic and interesting character, except that he more or less abandons his quest the moment he meets Elizabeth. He is drawn to her because her cheekbones remind him of his wife's, and he falls in love with her almost instantly. The attraction is mutual, if not entirely believable, and the rest of the story is a foregone conclusion, and would be even if we did not already know the end of their story from their granddaughter.
The second story is told by Laura, Armen and Elizabeth's granddaughter, a writer who knows very little about her Armenian heritage (although, to be fair, she doesn't seem to know that much about her Boston Brahmin heritage either). She is drawn into researching her history when a friend forwards her a photograph of someone with her last name from an exhibition focusing on the Armenian genocide. Her story of discovering her grandparent's history is interesting, but lacks emotional heft, although that may be because I found her grandparent's story itself to also lack spark.
Put together, we get two stories, neither of which is adequately fleshed out. Perhaps if Bohjalian had chosen to tell a single story, there would have been more room to create a more fully-realized world, and fewer characters who are simply shadows (Elizabeth's father, Armen's wife, and so on). Likewise, if Bohjalian had chosen to tell only the historical story (adding the contemporary story seems like little more than self-indulgence on his part), he might have been able to actually help his readers understand more about the Genocide You Know Nothing About (as he has Laura call it). Instead, I found myself confused by how Syria figured into the Armenian story, what the Germans were doing there, and what the Turks had against the Armenians in the first place (though I suspect most of the Armenians were asking the same question) and unconvinced both by Armen and Elizabeth's love affair and by Laura's historical quest.
The second story is told by Laura, Armen and Elizabeth's granddaughter, a writer who knows very little about her Armenian heritage (although, to be fair, she doesn't seem to know that much about her Boston Brahmin heritage either). She is drawn into researching her history when a friend forwards her a photograph of someone with her last name from an exhibition focusing on the Armenian genocide. Her story of discovering her grandparent's history is interesting, but lacks emotional heft, although that may be because I found her grandparent's story itself to also lack spark.
Put together, we get two stories, neither of which is adequately fleshed out. Perhaps if Bohjalian had chosen to tell a single story, there would have been more room to create a more fully-realized world, and fewer characters who are simply shadows (Elizabeth's father, Armen's wife, and so on). Likewise, if Bohjalian had chosen to tell only the historical story (adding the contemporary story seems like little more than self-indulgence on his part), he might have been able to actually help his readers understand more about the Genocide You Know Nothing About (as he has Laura call it). Instead, I found myself confused by how Syria figured into the Armenian story, what the Germans were doing there, and what the Turks had against the Armenians in the first place (though I suspect most of the Armenians were asking the same question) and unconvinced both by Armen and Elizabeth's love affair and by Laura's historical quest.
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