The Sandcastle Girls Part 3

This will be the last part of examining the Sandcastle Girls.  I welcome your comments and hope you are out there! 

What will the world become with recording on tape, disc, phones, computers and all the other systems of saving our memories?  Back in 1915 they had people’s memories (which we all know can be faulty) and photographic plates.  The world has changed a lot in the past century but now we have endless ways to capture history.  Now, at least in America, every person who is wronged by any thing can post it on YouTube and get satisfaction if you get enough people to view.  Can you relate to the German who preserved the photographic plates?  The jeopardy he placed himself in (I know it is fiction but think about if you would do it?).  In the end, isn’t this entire book about the adventures of these inanimate objects that tell a story? 

Chapter 12: History does matter. ‘There is a line connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians, the Bosnians, and the Rwandans.’  There is a connecting line between all of us.  As I was reading this book I went to the nail salon and met an interesting young woman, Holly.   We discussed our recent books and I mentioned The Sandcastle Girls about the Armenian slaughter.  Well, it just so happened that she is Armenian and suggested I read: 

It will be on my short list as soon as I read some uplifting books. Anyway, as we were discussing the book and the heinous acts committed against the Armenians, she told me of Hitler’s comment when challenged about extinguishing the Jews.  Supposedly he said: ‘no one remembers the Armenians, they will also forget the Jews’.  Back to History – if we forget it we will soon relive it. 

Anyway, this entire subject is depressing me on the gloomy, rainy day I am writing it.  I will close the discussion of this excellent book with a quote used in this book and attributed to  Aldous Huxley who observed, ‘Every man’s memory is his private literature.’  Go out and create your own literature for your heirs to uncover.

Happy Reading,

Barbara 

PS:  Do you think the title of this book is appropriate?  What would you have named it?

Sandcastle Girls Part 2

Hello Happy Readers,

I hope you are enjoying Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt.   I know Murray Rider is working diligently on some probing questions like what is the best Irish Whiskey!

To continue our discussion of The Sandcastle Girls by Christ Bohjalian I would like to interject a story that came from my mother.  Now I wish I had more details and could ask further questions about it.  For those of you who don’t know, my mother was of Greek ancestry.  Her story was that the Greeks and Turks hated each other for one reason or another (most likely religion – Christian vs. Muslim or land ownership).  Her father was orphaned at a young age.  The story follows that his mother or grandmother was killed by the Turks and that they had cut off her breasts.  So he had passed his hatred for the Turks to my mother and she also tried to pass that hatred along.  So my question to you is there reason to ethnically cleanse?  When you have a homogeneous group living together do they naturally develop a hatred of others?  Chapter Six begins with a wonderful statement:  ‘Ancestral bonds have a tendency to fray over time.  Our connections with the blood that once – generations past – was all that mattered become worn and snap.’

In Chapter 5, Silas Endicott states: ‘We came here to save these exotics, not romance them.’  ‘Exotics’ – defined is distant, foreign, outside the ordinary.  My though on reading this term used is that Silas thought he was saving some sort of flora or fauna. 

Diaspora – defined loosely as the dispersal of Jews initially from Babylon – is a word I had to look up while reading this book.  In most definitions it solely relates to Jews but Bohjalian uses it in relation to the Armenians and it can also be used in relation to the American slave trade.  Do you think we have read enough books dealing with diasporas in recent months????

Maria related that the beginning of this book was confusing without knowing what generation was speaking and the multitude of characters.  There were numerous characters to keep track of in this book and maybe a short diagram of them may have helped in the beginning – kind of a family tree.

For now I will close but I promise to be back in a short time. 

Happy reading,

Barbara

The Sandcastle Girls

Dear fellow readers,

Obviously my promise to get back to you about The House at Sugar Beach was a ruse – or I just didn’t get around to it!  Your choice!

Let’s get on with the Sandcastle Girls review by Chris Bohjalian.  Bohjalian never loses a chance to get into my psyche and teach and twist me into learning something new.  He never disappoints me – challenges my preconceived notions but does not disappoint. 

First let me say I was ignorant to the Armenian Holocaust.  Somewhere in my brain I know that people are cruel, dictators are heartless, and ethnic people have been persecuted from the time of humanity’s beginning.  However, history has never been brought to me doorstep as harshly as in the Sandcastle Girls. 

Ethnic cleansing – YIKES!  To rid the world of a people because of ‘anything’ is totally beyond my comprehension.  Jew, Christian, Muslim, Armenian, Russian, Indian, male, female, Downs Syndrome, Genius, one legged, six toed – I could go on and on with the people we could annihilate for the sake of ‘cleansing’.  So I am told that I speak from an American idea that we are better as a mixing pot of all peoples. 

So, how many of you read this book of the month?  What did you think??? 

Happy Reading,

Barbara

PS: I hope you will enjoy the entries of Murray Rider and hope you don’t mind me taking a month off.

Book of the Month for September

Happy Labor Day Weekend Readers.

I am hoping I have time this weekend to get some intense reading done since I am not yet finished the BOM from August.  I have lots of excuses: golf, gorgeous weather, not enough rain, traveling and visiting PA and the NJ shore and an awesome week long visit in Vermont with our stupendous grandson, Alexander.  We all have priorities you know!  It's so much easier to get reading done during ski season which is right around the corner!

Since I mention ski season and Vermont we are reading a Vermont author for September.

BOOK OF THE MONTH FOR SEPTEMBER:
The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian

Chris Bohjalian is one of my favorite authors and he has written some great fiction and non-fiction.  Some of it can be quite 'weird'  and have strange twists and turns and surprising endings.  My two favorites of his were Midwives and Skeletons at the Feast.  Both are worth reading.

(BTW: Don't click to look inside.  I can't get the picture without that phrase!)


Happy reading everyone.  I'll be back soon with the followup on Sugar Beach - as soon as I finish it!

Barbara