Ruth Hull Chatlien's Blog, page 24

Book Review: The Sandcastle Girls

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian tells the story of the Armenian genocide through the vehicle of one family’s history. Bohjalian is himself the grandson of Armenian survivors, so this story was a way for him to explore a topic of personal significance. However, the book is a work of fiction rather than thinly disguised family history.

The novel is narrated by contemporary Armenian-American novelist Laura Petrosian, who starts to dig into her grandparents’ past after discovering a photograph of a female genocide survivor who had the same last name as hers but who was not, as far as she knows, a relative. Laura learns that a museum has an archive of her grandmother’s papers, and through them, she uncovers a long-buried past with elements of horror, brutality, tragedy, and love.

Switch to 1915. A group of well-intentioned Americans from the group Friends of Armenia travel to Aleppo, Syria, to take food and medical help to Armenian refugees whom the Turks have forced from their homes. Among the American group are Silas Endicott, a wealthy Bostonian, and his headstrong, compassionate daughter Elizabeth. They are shocked by the cruel reality that confronts them on their arrival. Women and children have been marched hundred of miles through a searing desert. Most of them died long before reaching Syria. Those few who make it to Aleppo are subjected to further barbarities there. The book doesn’t shy away from letting the reader know how terrible a crime was inflicted upon the Armenian people, but it doesn’t wallow in gory details just for the sake of sensationalism.

While the Americans are preparing to take humanitarian supplies to a refugee camp out in the desert, Elizabeth meets Armen Petrosian, a young Armenian engineer who was away from home working on  the railroad when the deportations from Armenia began. He has heard that his wife and infant daughter are among the dead, but he has been unable to learn the exact circumstances of how they died. He and Elizabeth are drawn to each other immediately, but he cannot remain in Aleppo. He joins the British army, so he can fight the Turks that are trying to wipe out his entire culture. Yet, he and Elizabeth cannot forget their brief relationship, and they write to each other, hoping against all reason that they will see each other again.

In Armen’s absence, Elizabeth deepens her relationship with two other Armenian survivors—a widow and an orphan child who is a voluntary mute because she has seen unspeakable horrors. And as Armen experiences battle, he realizes that the internal forces driving him have changed forever.

These stories from the past are interwoven with chapters recounting Laura’s investigation. And that’s perhaps my biggest issue with the book. I think there are more present episodes than are necessary for the telling of this story. I think Chris Bohjalian, the author, spent too much time on the narrator’s search and discovery of the past because it in some way mirrored his own emotional process. But he may have lost sight of his readers. I began to get impatient with the interruptions. The compelling story is the one in the past. And it’s engrossing enough that I ultimately forgave the times I felt impatient to get back to it.

The other major criticism I had with the story was the use of a flagrantly improbable coincidence in the climax of the past history. Despite that, I still recommend the book strongly. It tells an important story and does so dramatically, not polemically or didactically, but through characters that we truly care about. That’s worth forgiving a few flaws.

Betsy’s Circle: Sydney, Lady Morgan

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Lady Morgan, line engraving by Robert Cooper, after Samuel Lover, via Wikimedia Commons

Another one of Betsy’s friends was Sydney, Lady Morgan, a prolific novelist and hotly discussed personality. If Betsy’s letters to her friend are to be believed, literary society positively fawned over the woman. (I’m allowing for the fact that there might be a bit of exaggeration in the way that we do with our friends.)

She was the daughter of Robert Owenson, a Irish comedic actor, and Jane Hill, the daughter of an English trader. Sometime in Sydney’s late adolescence (no one knows her exact age because she was too vain ever to reveal how old she was), the family had financial difficulties, and Sydney went to work as a governess. She also began her literary career by publishing a collection of poems. Her pen name was Glorvina.

Sydney Owenson then turned to writing novels: St. Clair (1804) and The Novice of St. Dominick (1806), both of which were highly romantic works. Some of her influences were Goethe and Rousseau. Then came the book that won her fame, The Wild Irish Girl (1806), a novelistic love song to her native land.

In 1812, she married a physician, Sir Thomas Charles Morgan. Two years later, she wrote what is regarded as her best book, O’Donnel, a realistic portrayal of Irish peasant life. It was not long after this that she met Betsy Bonaparte in Paris. They became close friends and conducted a lively correspondence that lasted for years. Many of Betsy’s letters to Lady Morgan have an astonishing candor. I think the two women saw each other as kindred spirits. They shared the qualities of worldliness, vanity, and ambition, as well as a love of culture and travel. Of herself, Lady Morgan wrote, “I am ambitious, far, far beyond the line of laudable emulations, perhaps beyond the power of being happy. Yet the strongest point of my ambition is to be every inch a woman.”

One interesting tidbit about her is that she was less than four feet tall (according to a plaque in the Victoria and Albert Museum). In addition to her novels, Lady Morgan also wrote surveys of France and Italy (which met with mixed reviews), and an autobiography that contains much of her correspondence.

The Manuscript Is Done

Essentially, that was the message I heard from my editor yesterday.

I’ve input all the changes I want to make in The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte based on the copy editing. I read it through. I sent my editor a long email discussing my evaluation of the book and the fact that it fulfills the goals I had for this particular project.

He wrote back expressing his opinion, which corroborated mine. The one thing that surprised me is that he suggested that I let it sit a couple of days and read it through one more time to make sure that nothing “clanks” in my ear. I was eager to send it on to the designer, but I think his counsel is wise.

I have such ambivalent feelings about letting the manuscript go. The last two years plus of living with these people has been very intense, and now I’m going to be done tinkering with their lives. I hope that Betsy, wherever she is, feels that I’ve told her story well. That was my goal when I started this project, to portray her tumultuous life in all its complexity, not to let her be a caricature or a symbol of any kind.

I don’t have children, so I’ve never had the experience of sending one of my babies out into the world . . . until now. As my editor said in an email the other day, the manuscript is about to go beyond the reach of my protection. If I’ve done my job right, I’ve imbued it with enough strength so that it can stand on its own.

This is the most famous portrait of the real Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, painted by Gilbert Stuart. Look at the bust on the left. Can’t you just see her saucy personality? That was one thing I’ve tried to capture in my book. It will be up to my future readers to determine if I succeeded.

Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte by Gilbert Stuart, 1804

Assassinations Attempts and Their Aftermath

Saturday, I described one of the assassination attempts on Napoleon Bonaparte. There were two others that I know of. On Christmas Eve 1800, royalist plotters planted a wagon with a bomb, known as an “infernal machine,” along the route that Napoleon was going to take to the opera. Napoleon was running late that evening and ordered his coachman to drive more quickly than expected, so he passed by before the explosion occurred. Reportedly, more than 50 people were killed or wounded by the device.

In 1804, the French police received word that royalists were plotting once again to overthrow Napoleon. The report implicated the Duc d’Enghien, a young prince of the house of Bourbon, which had ruled France before the Revolution. Most historians today believe that, although there was a plot, the report about Enghien was false. But at the time, Napoleon acted on it immediately. He sent French dragoons secretly across the Rhine into Baden, arrested the duc, and brought him to France for a trial. Enghien was found guilty and executed by firing squad within a week. The affair of the duc d’Enghien incensed the rest of Europe. Napoleon had violated the sovereignty of another state to take Enghien prisoner, and the trial and execution were conducted with unseemly haste. The affair gave Napoleon’s enemies damning evidence to support their claims that he was an upstart tyrant.

The discovery of the plot had an equally dramatic effect on Napoleon. He became paranoid that he would be killed and all that he had accomplished would be undone. So he agreed with minister of police Joseph Fouché that the only way to prevent future such attempts was to change the consulate into a hereditary empire, with Napoleon as the emperor. That way, even if Napoleon should die, his heirs would continue to rule.

Five years later, the assassination plot of Friedrich Staps caused Napoleon to reach an equally momentous decision. He loved his wife Josephine, but she was already in her mid-forties and had proven unable to give him a son. Still worried about the stability of his empire should he be killed, Napoleon decided to divorce Josephine. He formed an alliance with Austria, which until then had been one of France’s bitterest enemies, and married the Archduchess Marie Louise. She was a member of one of the great royal houses of Europe and trained to do her duty. She was also, apparently, sensual. The only thing reported about their wedding night is that after the relationship was consummated, she turned to Napoleon and said, “Do it again.” (At least, that’s what Nappy claimed later.) Whether that story is true or not, she did accomplish her purpose and in a year, gave Napoleon a son.

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Empress Marie Louise by François Gérard, via Wikimedia Commons