[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 111 (Tuesday, July 24, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5299-S5301]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CHRIS BOHJALIAN
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Vermont boasts many talented artists,
creators, composers and authors. Not least among them is Chris
Bohjalian of Lincoln, an accomplished writer whose recent novel, The
Sandcastle Girls, is drawing the praise and accolades of critics and
readers alike. Marcelle and I were inspired by the story Chris has
committed to the printed page; it is a novel that I believe will secure
his place among the most accomplished writers of the 21st Century.
I read with interest an interview with Chris published in Vermont's
Burlington Free Press on July 15. Like many artists and authors, Chris
drew from his own heritage in his case, Armenian--to pen a moving story
of compaslion and perseverance amid horror and tragedy. Perhaps this is
why he has called The Sandcastle Girls the ``most important book'' he
will ever write.
Chris is a longtime friend, and I have always enjoyed reading his
works. The Sandcastle Girls is an achievement that stands apart and
will deeply affect its readers.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article,
``The
[[Page S5300]]
Most Important Book I Will Ever Write.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Burlington Free Press, July 15, 2012]
``The most important book I will ever write''--Bohjalian talks about
`The Sandcastle Girls'
(By Sally Pollak)
Chris Bohjalian is a novelist who lives in Lincoln.
Bohjalian, 51, writes a Sunday column for the Burlington Free
Press. ``The Sandcastle Girls,'' his 14th novel, comes out
Tuesday. In a recent conversation with Free Press reporter
Sally Pollak, Bohjalian said ``The Sandcastle Girls'' is the
most important novel he will ever write. He said, as well, he
thinks it's the best book he's ever written.
``The Sandcastle Girls'' is set in Aleppo, Syria, during
the Armenian genocide, nearly a century in the past. The
story centers around a young American woman, Elizabeth
Endicott, who travels to the Middle East to assist Armenian
refugees. She befriends (and aids) a group of interesting
people, and falls in love with an Armenian engineer who has
suffered devastating losses.
The book is narrated by a contemporary American novelist of
Armenian heritage, Laura Petrosian. Bohjalian says Petrosian
is a female version of himself.
BFP: What compelled you to write this book?
CB: This is the second time I've tried to write about the
Armenian genocide. I tried to write about it when I finished
``Water Witches,'' prior to writing ``Midwives.'' I wrote an
entire novel called ``Sugar Daddy.'' Terrible book, never
published.
Not only was it a terrible, terrible book, but about this
time Carol Edgarian wrote ``Rise the Euphrates'' about the
Armenian genocide.
And I remember thinking to myself, Why does the world need
my book when it has ``Rise the Euphrates?''
Rather than try to save the novel I went onto my next
project, a novel about a midwife who dies in childbirth, and
wrote that book instead.
I was about 100 pages into the manuscript about the
Sandcastle girls when Mark Mustian published his interesting
and marvelous novel about the genocide, ``The Gendarme.''
Once again I thought the world doesn't need my novel.
But I was so emotionally invested in these characters, I
cared so much about the story, that I soldiered on and
finished it. I'm really glad I did. I love this novel.
Elizabeth Endicott, Nevart and Hatoun are my three favorite
female characters, along with Sibyl Danfroth in ``Midwives,''
that I've ever written.
BFP: ``The Sandcastle Girls'' is a mystery, a love story
and a narrative of war. How do you approach writing a novel
that weaves together these themes?
CB: Those elements are woven together through the
characters. I know when I read a novel, I'm interested in
characters I care about. And so when I began this book I
began with the people, I began with the characters. And I do
care so deeply about the characters in this book, especially
those women.
BFP: How did you come up with ``the compound'' in your
novel, the setting for much of the action and the place where
many of your characters live?
CB: Partly, I was simply after historical authenticity:
Where would Elizabeth Endicott, an American, be living? Then,
however, I saw the importance of the juxtaposition of where
Elizabeth lays her head at night compared to where the
refugees who are coming from the desert are sleeping. The
square of the citadel is an innermost ring of Dante's
inferno, compared to the compound.
BFP: Did you know when you started writing the book how you
were going to resolve it?
CB: I never know where my books are going when I begin
them. I depend upon my characters to take me by the hand and
lead me through the dark of the story. I didn't know this
novel was even going to have a component that was mysterious
when I began it. All I knew was that I wanted to examine what
my narrator calls the ``Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing
About.''
BFP: Can you describe the sense of responsibility or
obligation you might have felt writing a novel that would
tell people something about this mass killing, now a century
in the past?
CB: I know in my heart this is the most important book I'm
ever going to write. I'm telling a story that is not known
but was precedent-setting for some of the most horrific
tragedies and crimes of the last century. There's a direct
line between the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the
killing fields of Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda. It's a long list.
In 1915, there were roughly two million Armenians living in
the Ottoman empire. By the end of the First World War, 1.5
million would be dead, three out of every four of them. In
1915, I had four Armenian great-grandparents. By the end of
that year, at least one would be dead. Both of my Armenian
grandparents are genocide survivors.
My family history is a part of that horrific global
narrative. So when I started this book, I began with the
personal. My narrator, Laura Petrosian, is a female version
of me. That's my grandparents' house in the novel.
Elizabeth Endicott and Armen Petrosian (central characters
in the book) are not my grandparents. They are completely
fictional.
BFP: When did your grandparents, Leo and Haigoohi
Bohjalian, come to this country?
CB: There were two points of arrival. I believe my
grandfather, Leo, first arrived here in 1920 but he didn't
stay. He went back to get my grandmother and they lived in
Paris until late 1927, or very early 1928.
BFP: What do you know about your own Armenian ancestors?
And how does your family's history figure into this work?
CB: I know almost nothing about my Armenian ancestry; I
know even less about my (maternal) Swedish ancestry.
I don't know what demons dogged my mother and father, but
they never talked to me about their childhoods. That's why
perhaps ``The Sandcastle Girls'' is a novel and not a memoir.
I couldn't tell you enough about my Armenian and Swedish
ancestors to write a memoir. I have wondered if I am going to
learn a lot about my (Armenian) ancestors when this book
comes out, which would be great.
My aunt believes that Haigoohi's father (Bohjalian's great-
grandfather) was murdered by Turkish soldiers because he
supplied horses to the army. They killed the Armenian and
took the horses.
The history of ``The Sandcastle Girls'' is accurate. I did
my research and I did my homework. I believe that Aleppo of
1915 (where the novel is set) is the real thing.
I knew so little about the Armenian genocide as a child,
and what my grandparents must have endured, that I saw no
irony in the fact that my first serious girlfriend when I was
13 and 14 years old was Turkish. I understood as a child that
my grandparents were from Armenia and were magnificently
exotic, by the standards of both grandparents. My mother
really did call their house the Ottoman Annex of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Their English, up to as late as
1970, was heavily accented.
BFP: Your father, Aram Bohjalian, died last summer, about a
year before the publication of ``The Sandcastle Girls.'' Did
you get a chance to talk to him about the book? What were his
feelings about the novel?
CB: My father's eyesight had been diminished by macular
degeneration for so long, he was not able to read even large-
print books. That photograph (of Bohjalian's father and
grandparents) is one of many photographs that my dad and I
pored over the last two years of his life. Because he was so
ill, I was visiting him a lot. The way I would try to take
his mind off the pain he was in was to get out family photo
albums and ask him to tell me stories, ask him to tell me
about the different people in the photographs. A lot of it he
didn't know.
My father, as a first generation son of immigrants, in many
ways distanced himself as much as he could from his Armenian
ancestry. He grew up in a house in Westchester County in
which everyone spoke Armenian or Turkish. When he started
kindergarten, he spoke not a single word of English. He
didn't even know how to ask where the bathroom was. In terms
of distancing himself from his Armenain ancestry, he became
as American as possible.
He was not as handsome as Don Draper in ``Mad Men'' but he
was a Mad Man. He was an advertising executive at large New
York City ad agencies.
I think my father knew more than he wanted to share with
me. He had mixed emotions about it. On the one hand, he was
always really proud of me; even when his eyesight was gone,
he loved listening to my books on audio, even the bad ones.
But I think he also felt that this story was too painful
for a novel. I remember once reminding him when we talked
about this that I had written novels about a woman dying in
childbirth, a couple who had their twin daughters washed away
in a flood, the Holocaust, and a domestic abuse murder-
suicide. And I also told him that as an Armenian-American, I
felt an incredible desire to write this story because it
feels so much a part of me.
BFP: Can you tell us something about your recent trip to
Armenia and Lebanon?
CB: The principal driving force that led me to Armenia was
the death of my father, and not simply his death but his
illness. The more time I spent looking at old family
photographs, the more time I spent seeing images of Leo and
Haigoohi, the more I felt this profound desire to see Mount
Ararat.
I have never in my life been outside Vermont and felt less
like a stranger in a strange land, than when I was in
Yerevan, Armenia. I was so happy there in ways I hadn't
expected.
BFP: ``The Sandcastle Girls'' will be released Tuesday. Are
you nervous as publication approaches?
CB: I've never been as emotionally invested in how people
respond to a book as I am with this one. Because this is the
most important book I will ever write. And I think it's the
best book I've ever written. And the reason why it's the most
important book is pure and simple: because it's about the
``Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing About.''
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