Chris Bohjalian's Blog, page 22
September 3, 2013
The boulder’s big, but our children can move it.
A child brings two heavy buckets of water into the home of a strange old woman and discovers there a wall of cages with dogs trapped inside – and a small carpet on the floor that has been woven from dog fur. A nine-year-old girl refuses to go to bed, reducing her parents to tears of happiness. . .because her verbal defiance marks the first time she has spoken in years. And a young adult befriends a stream and then, when it dries up, has to journey far up a mountain to push aside the massive boulder that has rolled into the streambed and dammed the flow.
Behind these short stories are much longer ones. Behind these fables are powerful sagas of survival and poignant tales of transcending a life in which the cards are stacked against you. In some cases, it’s the universal dramas that accompany adolescence anywhere; in others, it’s the litany of problems that confront many teenagers today in rural Armenia – poverty, absentee fathers, the seeming impossibility of escaping a world of moldering Soviet industrial sarcophagi that blight an otherwise preternaturally beautiful landscape.
I saw these stories enacted by young adults last month in an experimental theater piece in Karakert, a town of about 4,000 people an hour northwest of Yerevan. The program is part of the Children of Armenia Fund (COAF) initiative in Karakert, an effort that is centered around a $700,000 school renovation, but also involves teacher training, elevating the community’s health care, economic and professional development, and – in this case – summer theater.
COAF is the non-profit brainchild of Armenian-American businessman Garo Armen, and has been working to elevate the lives of rural Armenian children for a decade now, with schools and programming in twelve villages today.
The rehearsal dazzled me. Before I left for Armenia, some of my friends who live in Yerevan told me I wouldn’t see any theater or opera on this visit, because so much of the city’s performing arts community is on vacation at the end of the summer. No worries: I had Karakert on my calendar. The ensemble featured twenty kids between the ages of 12 and 17, working with a Yerevan director who has been journeying almost daily to work with the young actors. Together they have written their monologues – or, in some cases, brief scenes – as well as chosen the music and choreographed the occasional dances.
I speak about fifty words of Armenian, most of which involve greetings and food, but the emotions in the performance were clear and they were raw. If I didn’t understand the details, I got the gist. I watched enrapt, impressed by the actors’ authenticity and moved by their emotional candor. This wasn’t merely about drama: It was about catharsis and growth.
After the performance, the students surprised me by wanting my opinion as a writer on their original narratives: What, in my judgment, worked – as well as what didn’t. I tried to be helpful and honest, but I kept coming back to this reality: A decade ago, their school was a husk with neither windows nor water, a casualty of the earthquake and sudden Soviet collapse. In the winter, it was heated with kerosene and burning manure. Now it’s a vibrant and inspiring world with a computer center, creativity lab, painting loft, and cheerful, comfortable classrooms. In some ways, these kids are the product of both a nation brought to its knees between 1988 and 1991, and of the tangible progress that is occurring daily. They know where they are coming from – and where they want to be going.
We in the Diaspora are right to worry about oligarchic dishonesty and political corruption in the small swatch of our once massive empire that today is our nation. It’s natural to wonder how we can pull our fellow Armenians from a fiscal quicksand created by closed borders and an unfairly landlocked geography.
But if I learned anything on my most recent visit to Armenia, it is this: Our youth there are not merely resilient. They are not merely talented. They make the most of the opportunities we in the Diaspora give them. They are ready and willing to climb the mountain to push aside even the most damming – and damning – boulders. With a little help from all of us, they are capable of building an Armenia that will make the next generation very, very proud.
* * *
Chris Bohjalian’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published this summer. This essay appeared originally in the Armenian Weekly.
Behind these short stories are much longer ones. Behind these fables are powerful sagas of survival and poignant tales of transcending a life in which the cards are stacked against you. In some cases, it’s the universal dramas that accompany adolescence anywhere; in others, it’s the litany of problems that confront many teenagers today in rural Armenia – poverty, absentee fathers, the seeming impossibility of escaping a world of moldering Soviet industrial sarcophagi that blight an otherwise preternaturally beautiful landscape.
I saw these stories enacted by young adults last month in an experimental theater piece in Karakert, a town of about 4,000 people an hour northwest of Yerevan. The program is part of the Children of Armenia Fund (COAF) initiative in Karakert, an effort that is centered around a $700,000 school renovation, but also involves teacher training, elevating the community’s health care, economic and professional development, and – in this case – summer theater.
COAF is the non-profit brainchild of Armenian-American businessman Garo Armen, and has been working to elevate the lives of rural Armenian children for a decade now, with schools and programming in twelve villages today.
The rehearsal dazzled me. Before I left for Armenia, some of my friends who live in Yerevan told me I wouldn’t see any theater or opera on this visit, because so much of the city’s performing arts community is on vacation at the end of the summer. No worries: I had Karakert on my calendar. The ensemble featured twenty kids between the ages of 12 and 17, working with a Yerevan director who has been journeying almost daily to work with the young actors. Together they have written their monologues – or, in some cases, brief scenes – as well as chosen the music and choreographed the occasional dances.
I speak about fifty words of Armenian, most of which involve greetings and food, but the emotions in the performance were clear and they were raw. If I didn’t understand the details, I got the gist. I watched enrapt, impressed by the actors’ authenticity and moved by their emotional candor. This wasn’t merely about drama: It was about catharsis and growth.
After the performance, the students surprised me by wanting my opinion as a writer on their original narratives: What, in my judgment, worked – as well as what didn’t. I tried to be helpful and honest, but I kept coming back to this reality: A decade ago, their school was a husk with neither windows nor water, a casualty of the earthquake and sudden Soviet collapse. In the winter, it was heated with kerosene and burning manure. Now it’s a vibrant and inspiring world with a computer center, creativity lab, painting loft, and cheerful, comfortable classrooms. In some ways, these kids are the product of both a nation brought to its knees between 1988 and 1991, and of the tangible progress that is occurring daily. They know where they are coming from – and where they want to be going.
We in the Diaspora are right to worry about oligarchic dishonesty and political corruption in the small swatch of our once massive empire that today is our nation. It’s natural to wonder how we can pull our fellow Armenians from a fiscal quicksand created by closed borders and an unfairly landlocked geography.
But if I learned anything on my most recent visit to Armenia, it is this: Our youth there are not merely resilient. They are not merely talented. They make the most of the opportunities we in the Diaspora give them. They are ready and willing to climb the mountain to push aside even the most damming – and damning – boulders. With a little help from all of us, they are capable of building an Armenia that will make the next generation very, very proud.
* * *
Chris Bohjalian’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published this summer. This essay appeared originally in the Armenian Weekly.
August 31, 2013
Teachers – like kids – say the darnedest things
That great gust of wind – think a Wizard of Oz-sized tornado – you just felt was the collective exhalation of parents everywhere: Their children are finally back in school. Yup, those back-to-school sales that began in July are now a distant memory because our kids really are back in school.
And while Art Linkletter reminded an earlier generation that “kids say the darnedest things,” teachers aren’t slouches either when it comes to offering the darnedest advice. Here are some of the things that teachers and professors have shared with me or my classmates over the years that I’ll never forget.
When I was a fifth grader in Stamford, Connecticut, one of my classmates admitted that she was scared of thunder. Our teacher reassured her by explaining, “Thunder is just a noise. It’s not the thunder that’s going to kill you: It’s the lightning.”
When I was a seventh grader, my English teacher was reading from a grammar textbook that was going to help us understand the difference between subjects and objects. The passage he read ended with this sentence: “Father is laying tile on the kitchen floor.” He paused and then said, his tone happily bemused, “Tile. What an interesting name for Mother.” I never again confused an object with a subject in a sentence.
Just before I started eleventh grade, my family moved from Miami, Florida to Bronxville, New York. On my first day in a course on foreign policy and international relations, I must have asked the teacher one too many questions about her grading policy and expectations. “You are going to grow into a man with serious sexual performance problems, you realize that, don’t you?” she said to me in front of the class when she saw me raise my hand once again.
When I was a sophomore in college in Amherst, Massachusetts, I wanted to take a creative writing seminar with the school’s visiting novelist. My mother was a huge fan of the woman’s work. To determine who would be among the few, the proud, and the chosen, prospective students had to submit a short story. She read mine over the December holidays and then, in early January, summoned me to her office in the brick monolith that housed the English Department.
When she saw me in the entrance to her office, she beckoned me in. My story sat on the putting green expanse of mahogany that served as her desk. She slid it over to me as if it were road kill. “I have three words for you,” she said. I waited. I knew this wasn’t going to be good. After a moment that seemed to last a very, very long time, she advised, “Be a banker.”
Now, this was especially disheartening counsel because only a semester earlier I had nearly failed the school’s introduction to economics. How did my econ professor try to cheer me up? “I really wouldn’t worry,” he said to me. “I see your byline in the school newspaper all the time. It’s not like you’re going to be a banker.”
Finally, there is this. The pop star Jim Croce died in a plane crash when I was in middle school. One of his biggest hits was a ballad that was at once wistful and a little saccharine: “Time in a bottle.” My English teacher was devastated when he died. But she also knew that I wanted to be a writer and so she pulled me aside after class and said, “It’s just so sad that he has no more time. That’s irony. That’s a story. Sometimes, irony is exactly what a great story is about.”
I think about that observation a lot – and the fact that she took the time to share it with me. My daughter has had some terrific teachers like that over the years. My wife had some, too.
So, as the summer ends and the school year begins, I raise my glass to say thanks to those life-changing teachers who know that sincerity can be as memorable as snark.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on September 1, 2013. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published this summer.)
And while Art Linkletter reminded an earlier generation that “kids say the darnedest things,” teachers aren’t slouches either when it comes to offering the darnedest advice. Here are some of the things that teachers and professors have shared with me or my classmates over the years that I’ll never forget.
When I was a fifth grader in Stamford, Connecticut, one of my classmates admitted that she was scared of thunder. Our teacher reassured her by explaining, “Thunder is just a noise. It’s not the thunder that’s going to kill you: It’s the lightning.”
When I was a seventh grader, my English teacher was reading from a grammar textbook that was going to help us understand the difference between subjects and objects. The passage he read ended with this sentence: “Father is laying tile on the kitchen floor.” He paused and then said, his tone happily bemused, “Tile. What an interesting name for Mother.” I never again confused an object with a subject in a sentence.
Just before I started eleventh grade, my family moved from Miami, Florida to Bronxville, New York. On my first day in a course on foreign policy and international relations, I must have asked the teacher one too many questions about her grading policy and expectations. “You are going to grow into a man with serious sexual performance problems, you realize that, don’t you?” she said to me in front of the class when she saw me raise my hand once again.
When I was a sophomore in college in Amherst, Massachusetts, I wanted to take a creative writing seminar with the school’s visiting novelist. My mother was a huge fan of the woman’s work. To determine who would be among the few, the proud, and the chosen, prospective students had to submit a short story. She read mine over the December holidays and then, in early January, summoned me to her office in the brick monolith that housed the English Department.
When she saw me in the entrance to her office, she beckoned me in. My story sat on the putting green expanse of mahogany that served as her desk. She slid it over to me as if it were road kill. “I have three words for you,” she said. I waited. I knew this wasn’t going to be good. After a moment that seemed to last a very, very long time, she advised, “Be a banker.”
Now, this was especially disheartening counsel because only a semester earlier I had nearly failed the school’s introduction to economics. How did my econ professor try to cheer me up? “I really wouldn’t worry,” he said to me. “I see your byline in the school newspaper all the time. It’s not like you’re going to be a banker.”
Finally, there is this. The pop star Jim Croce died in a plane crash when I was in middle school. One of his biggest hits was a ballad that was at once wistful and a little saccharine: “Time in a bottle.” My English teacher was devastated when he died. But she also knew that I wanted to be a writer and so she pulled me aside after class and said, “It’s just so sad that he has no more time. That’s irony. That’s a story. Sometimes, irony is exactly what a great story is about.”
I think about that observation a lot – and the fact that she took the time to share it with me. My daughter has had some terrific teachers like that over the years. My wife had some, too.
So, as the summer ends and the school year begins, I raise my glass to say thanks to those life-changing teachers who know that sincerity can be as memorable as snark.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on September 1, 2013. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published this summer.)
August 26, 2013
It's tough to top a cake with a squid
When most of us think of the Champlain Valley Fair, which opened yesterday in Essex Junction, Vermont, we don’t think of fine dining. We think of pork boners. (I just love that I can write those two words in a family newspaper.) We imagine the fried dough. We revel in our memories of Mini Cooper-sized vats of fried onion rings. I know I could live quite happily, thank you very much, on the maple creemees and doughnuts and cotton candy that are found in the sugarhouse. The aroma alone makes the sugarhouse one of my favorite places on earth.
But there is another side to fair food. It’s not necessarily elegant and it’s certainly not fine dining. But it is creative. I am referring to the smelly sneaker version of desserts: The fair’s annual Ugly Cake Contest for kids. It occurs this year on the last day of the fair, a week from Monday, and I am telling you about it now so you and your kids have a full eight days to prepare.
The rules are simple. The fair will give your child baked cake rounds. The contestants will have 15 minutes to use the rounds as the basis for their repulsive cakes, decorating them with whatever they want – as long as every single item they bring with them to the fair is edible. There will be prizes for kids between 5 and 10 years of age, and another set for the teenagers between 11 and 16. Judging will be 2:30 on September 2nd, but you should pre-register at www.champlainvalleyfair.org.
Chris Ashby, director of marketing and communications at the Champlain Valley Exposition, told me that among the winning cakes the last few years was one that included a dead squid. “A squid is edible, so it counted,” he said. The cake used green icing for seaweed. Another winner was a massive, scuplted eyeball, complete with veins.
Of course, there are plenty of other gastronomic reasons to visit the fair between now and a week from Monday. There is a chili contest this coming Friday, as well as the traditional county fair contests for pies and brownies and breads. Meanwhile, the Essex Resort and Spa will be offering cooking demonstrations three times a day in the fair’s “culinary department” in the Ware Building Annex. (I love the idea that the fair has a “culinary department.”)
Whatever you do, however, here is one critical safety tip: Be sure and schedule a little time between your eating and your riding. As Ashby explained, “You probably want to avoid a ride like the Stinger if you’ve just eaten a few pork boners.” (Just for the record, I did not pay Ashby to say “pork boner.”) The Stinger is one of the thrill rides that twists and turns and leaves your stomach somewhere up near your ears.
Ashby’s advice? If you’re going to eat like Honey Boo Boo Child, walk around the fair for a little while before savoring the next ride: “My favorite thing about the fair is that there are so many different things to do. Visit the history exhibits. This year the University of Vermont is bringing a terrific piece on the story behind I-89. You wouldn’t think the interstate is that interesting, but it is. UVM brought a huge archive of photographs.” In addition, Vermont’s Civil War historian, Howard Coffin, will be at the fair each and every day. This summer is the 150th anniversary of the battles of Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and Chickamauga, and there is no one more knowledgeable about the role Vermonters played in the conflict than Coffin.
Today is only day two of the fair. That means there is still plenty of time to design the world’s ugliest cake, visit the world’s biggest pumpkin – which, I promise you, will be at least as scary as any of those cakes – and scarf down a maple doughnut. . .or two. Visit the cows and the horses. Watch a baby chick hatch.
Sure, we all eat like there’s no tomorrow and our arteries will never forgive us. But the fair is, first and foremost, the chance to set free that little kid inside us all – that kid who knows there’s nothing cooler than a cake with a squid.
_______________________________
This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on August 25, 2013. His most recent novel, "The Light in the Ruins," was published in July.
But there is another side to fair food. It’s not necessarily elegant and it’s certainly not fine dining. But it is creative. I am referring to the smelly sneaker version of desserts: The fair’s annual Ugly Cake Contest for kids. It occurs this year on the last day of the fair, a week from Monday, and I am telling you about it now so you and your kids have a full eight days to prepare.
The rules are simple. The fair will give your child baked cake rounds. The contestants will have 15 minutes to use the rounds as the basis for their repulsive cakes, decorating them with whatever they want – as long as every single item they bring with them to the fair is edible. There will be prizes for kids between 5 and 10 years of age, and another set for the teenagers between 11 and 16. Judging will be 2:30 on September 2nd, but you should pre-register at www.champlainvalleyfair.org.
Chris Ashby, director of marketing and communications at the Champlain Valley Exposition, told me that among the winning cakes the last few years was one that included a dead squid. “A squid is edible, so it counted,” he said. The cake used green icing for seaweed. Another winner was a massive, scuplted eyeball, complete with veins.
Of course, there are plenty of other gastronomic reasons to visit the fair between now and a week from Monday. There is a chili contest this coming Friday, as well as the traditional county fair contests for pies and brownies and breads. Meanwhile, the Essex Resort and Spa will be offering cooking demonstrations three times a day in the fair’s “culinary department” in the Ware Building Annex. (I love the idea that the fair has a “culinary department.”)
Whatever you do, however, here is one critical safety tip: Be sure and schedule a little time between your eating and your riding. As Ashby explained, “You probably want to avoid a ride like the Stinger if you’ve just eaten a few pork boners.” (Just for the record, I did not pay Ashby to say “pork boner.”) The Stinger is one of the thrill rides that twists and turns and leaves your stomach somewhere up near your ears.
Ashby’s advice? If you’re going to eat like Honey Boo Boo Child, walk around the fair for a little while before savoring the next ride: “My favorite thing about the fair is that there are so many different things to do. Visit the history exhibits. This year the University of Vermont is bringing a terrific piece on the story behind I-89. You wouldn’t think the interstate is that interesting, but it is. UVM brought a huge archive of photographs.” In addition, Vermont’s Civil War historian, Howard Coffin, will be at the fair each and every day. This summer is the 150th anniversary of the battles of Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and Chickamauga, and there is no one more knowledgeable about the role Vermonters played in the conflict than Coffin.
Today is only day two of the fair. That means there is still plenty of time to design the world’s ugliest cake, visit the world’s biggest pumpkin – which, I promise you, will be at least as scary as any of those cakes – and scarf down a maple doughnut. . .or two. Visit the cows and the horses. Watch a baby chick hatch.
Sure, we all eat like there’s no tomorrow and our arteries will never forgive us. But the fair is, first and foremost, the chance to set free that little kid inside us all – that kid who knows there’s nothing cooler than a cake with a squid.
_______________________________
This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on August 25, 2013. His most recent novel, "The Light in the Ruins," was published in July.
August 11, 2013
The bread and circus of the demolition derby
Thursday night, my wife and I were at the #1 Auto Parts Demolition Derby at the Addison County Fair and Field Days in New Haven, Vermont to cheer on our good friend, Amanda Bull. She and her family had taken her ancient Plymouth Acclaim and gotten it ready for the competition. That meant removing the windows, bumpers, and the radiator coolant. It meant taking out all the seats but the driver’s. It meant making it less likely that she would be skewered by shattered glass or burned beyond recognition if the car caught on fire.
Finally, it meant painting a huge #18 – her entry number – on the sides of the vehicle. This was second time that Amanda had climbed into a helmet and an old junker car and sped into the fray. She was in the derby in 2009.
Unfortunately, this year her time in the derby was cut short. Within seconds of the start of the first heat, another vehicle slammed into the driver’s side door of her Acclaim. It was an illegal hit and that driver was disqualified, but Amanda harbors no ill will: Another car was pushing her across the pad as she was restarting her vehicle when she was hit. Nevertheless, her car was out for the count and so was Amanda: Badly bruised ribs was the technical diagnosis, but it was actually badly bruised everything.
In the second heat, one of the cars was flipped onto its back, a turtle upside-down on its shell. That driver had to be pulled from the vehicle by EMTs and carried via body board into the back of an ambulance.
There were easily a thousand of us watching the derby Thursday night, despite skies that looked ominous and dark. But the rain held off.
I chatted briefly before the first heat with Alice Coburn and Dave Minard of Middlebury. They had gotten to the grandstand an hour before the start so they would have good seats. As they’d waited, they’d enjoyed the fair’s goulash, fried dough, ice cream, and some fudge. “We watch for the crash-bang,” Alice told me, explaining why they go. “It’s better than wrecking your own car on the street,” Dave added.
I spotted Bay Jackson a few minutes later. Bay is a neighbor of mine from Lincoln, a mom of three young children now, but I’ve known her since she was in middle school. She was watching with her family from the grass. “I’m a fan of the whole scene. It’s so different from what you typically see in life,” she said. But then she grew meditative and added, “This is a part of where I live and where I grew up, so it’s a part of who I am.”
I was tweeting pictures of the mayhem – the violence simultaneously primal and mechanical – and it was fascinating to me how polarizing the images were. People either loved or hated the bread-and-circus nature of the carnage.
The next morning, I spoke with Amanda to see how she was feeling. She was sore and disappointed that her night had been cut short. She thought this year’s derby was violent because of the weather this week: “The problem was that usually during field days, it rains and softens up the track. It’s hard to build up speed. I remember in 2009, I was covered with mud from my head to my toes. But this year it was dry out there. I knew it was going to be different. The first hit rocked my whole body forward. There was just no mud to slow you down.”
I told her that my tweets from the night before had led some people to suggest I was crazy even to watch. Her response? “I try not to judge what other people do crazy-wise. It’s a calculated risk for me – and it’s a good time out there.”
Indeed. The other day a friend reminded me that we had hit 52 miles an hour on our bikes on a steep downhill slope east of Lake Placid. Last winter I gave a speech in Anjar, Lebanon, the sounds of Syrian shells near enough that they sounded like distant thunder. I’m not one to judge. Next year if Amanda is in the derby, my wife and I will be there, too.
Who knows? Maybe we’ll be there even if she’s not.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on August 11, 2013. Chris's most recent novel, "The Light in the Ruins," was published last month._
Finally, it meant painting a huge #18 – her entry number – on the sides of the vehicle. This was second time that Amanda had climbed into a helmet and an old junker car and sped into the fray. She was in the derby in 2009.
Unfortunately, this year her time in the derby was cut short. Within seconds of the start of the first heat, another vehicle slammed into the driver’s side door of her Acclaim. It was an illegal hit and that driver was disqualified, but Amanda harbors no ill will: Another car was pushing her across the pad as she was restarting her vehicle when she was hit. Nevertheless, her car was out for the count and so was Amanda: Badly bruised ribs was the technical diagnosis, but it was actually badly bruised everything.
In the second heat, one of the cars was flipped onto its back, a turtle upside-down on its shell. That driver had to be pulled from the vehicle by EMTs and carried via body board into the back of an ambulance.
There were easily a thousand of us watching the derby Thursday night, despite skies that looked ominous and dark. But the rain held off.
I chatted briefly before the first heat with Alice Coburn and Dave Minard of Middlebury. They had gotten to the grandstand an hour before the start so they would have good seats. As they’d waited, they’d enjoyed the fair’s goulash, fried dough, ice cream, and some fudge. “We watch for the crash-bang,” Alice told me, explaining why they go. “It’s better than wrecking your own car on the street,” Dave added.
I spotted Bay Jackson a few minutes later. Bay is a neighbor of mine from Lincoln, a mom of three young children now, but I’ve known her since she was in middle school. She was watching with her family from the grass. “I’m a fan of the whole scene. It’s so different from what you typically see in life,” she said. But then she grew meditative and added, “This is a part of where I live and where I grew up, so it’s a part of who I am.”
I was tweeting pictures of the mayhem – the violence simultaneously primal and mechanical – and it was fascinating to me how polarizing the images were. People either loved or hated the bread-and-circus nature of the carnage.
The next morning, I spoke with Amanda to see how she was feeling. She was sore and disappointed that her night had been cut short. She thought this year’s derby was violent because of the weather this week: “The problem was that usually during field days, it rains and softens up the track. It’s hard to build up speed. I remember in 2009, I was covered with mud from my head to my toes. But this year it was dry out there. I knew it was going to be different. The first hit rocked my whole body forward. There was just no mud to slow you down.”
I told her that my tweets from the night before had led some people to suggest I was crazy even to watch. Her response? “I try not to judge what other people do crazy-wise. It’s a calculated risk for me – and it’s a good time out there.”
Indeed. The other day a friend reminded me that we had hit 52 miles an hour on our bikes on a steep downhill slope east of Lake Placid. Last winter I gave a speech in Anjar, Lebanon, the sounds of Syrian shells near enough that they sounded like distant thunder. I’m not one to judge. Next year if Amanda is in the derby, my wife and I will be there, too.
Who knows? Maybe we’ll be there even if she’s not.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on August 11, 2013. Chris's most recent novel, "The Light in the Ruins," was published last month._
August 4, 2013
The sacred space behind those white clapboards
When, years ago, my wife and I bought a yellow Victorian beside a white clapboard church here in Lincoln, Vermont, we figured we’d wander in most Easters and Christmas Eves. Maybe we’d pop in occasionally on other Sunday mornings when, for whatever the reason, we were uncharacteristically inspired. . .or we’d decided not to sleep until noon.
But then two things happened. On our first Sunday in town, the two of us were sitting contentedly on our front porch reading the Sunday edition of this newspaper when church ended. An elderly gentleman emerged from the sanctuary and wandered over to say hello. His name was Fletcher Brown and we chatted for about ten minutes. As he was leaving, he motioned at the forty or so yards that separated our porch from the church and observed with a wry smile, “Ain’t no excuse not to go to church now, is there?”
There wasn’t, so the next week we did. We went mostly out of guilt. We took a pew behind Ken and Clara Hallock, the retired couple who my wife had told me had brought us a Christmas cactus while I’d been working in Burlington. After the benediction, Ken turned around, took my hand, and shook it vigorously. “God loves you, and so do I!” he exclaimed.
I was still a pretty jaded young pup back then. I believe I responded, “Thank you.” But inside I was honestly touched by how readily and genuinely he and his God had welcomed me into the church. My wife was, too.
So we went again. And again. We’ve been going ever since.
And helping us along the path from cynics to believers was the pastor, David Wood, who has become a great friend.
This year that church building is celebrating its 150th year and today we are commemorating its century and a half here in Lincoln. One hundred and fifty years is not especially long for a church building – not even for one here in New England. (In the Middle East and Europe, there are mosques and synagogues and churches that view a century and a half as positively prepubescent.)
But the building has crammed a lot of history into its brief time here on earth, its most notable accomplishment being the reality that once upon a time it sat a half-mile from where it resides now in the center of town. In 1981 a different church sat there. On the night of Good Friday that year, a gas leak sparked an inferno that destroyed just about all of that building. The next morning, the principal artifact left in the ashes was the steel weathervane that had sat atop the steeple. Wood was in his late twenties then and had been preaching in that pulpit barely two years.
The congregation, a fraction of the size it is now, felt it was profoundly important to have their church anchoring the center of the village. Consequently, they moved the dormant church that existed a half-mile away to the center of town – a Herculean accomplishment financially and logistically, but one that energized the community and the parishioners. When I asked Wood his feelings about this building, the only church I’ve ever known here, he smiled and said, “It can’t not be special to you when you helped roll it on to the foundation. It can’t not be special when you helped paint the ceiling.”
Among Wood’s favorite moments in this church? That August Sunday in 1982, when 300 people packed into the sanctuary for the first service inside the building in its new location; a December Sunday in 1983, the first season they decorated the church for Christmas; and any of the spring or summer days when he has witnessed forty or fifty children running around the church and the grounds as part of Vacation Bible School. Wood estimates that he has held roughly 100 newborn babies from the front of that church and conducted well over 200 weddings. He’s also shepherded his congregation through 300 funerals. There is, for Wood, “a sacredness to the space. It leads me to God, often through the hallowed memory of the folks who have been a part of it all.”
I’ve no idea if I’ll live as long as Ken Hallock or Fletcher Brown. But when I look at the exterior of that sacred space from my porch, it seems to me that it wouldn’t be a bad legacy if someday I’ve told a young buck a third my age that he’s welcome in the church, too – and somehow convinced him to stay.
Happy birthday to the United Church of Lincoln.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on August 4, 2013. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published last month.)
But then two things happened. On our first Sunday in town, the two of us were sitting contentedly on our front porch reading the Sunday edition of this newspaper when church ended. An elderly gentleman emerged from the sanctuary and wandered over to say hello. His name was Fletcher Brown and we chatted for about ten minutes. As he was leaving, he motioned at the forty or so yards that separated our porch from the church and observed with a wry smile, “Ain’t no excuse not to go to church now, is there?”
There wasn’t, so the next week we did. We went mostly out of guilt. We took a pew behind Ken and Clara Hallock, the retired couple who my wife had told me had brought us a Christmas cactus while I’d been working in Burlington. After the benediction, Ken turned around, took my hand, and shook it vigorously. “God loves you, and so do I!” he exclaimed.
I was still a pretty jaded young pup back then. I believe I responded, “Thank you.” But inside I was honestly touched by how readily and genuinely he and his God had welcomed me into the church. My wife was, too.
So we went again. And again. We’ve been going ever since.
And helping us along the path from cynics to believers was the pastor, David Wood, who has become a great friend.
This year that church building is celebrating its 150th year and today we are commemorating its century and a half here in Lincoln. One hundred and fifty years is not especially long for a church building – not even for one here in New England. (In the Middle East and Europe, there are mosques and synagogues and churches that view a century and a half as positively prepubescent.)
But the building has crammed a lot of history into its brief time here on earth, its most notable accomplishment being the reality that once upon a time it sat a half-mile from where it resides now in the center of town. In 1981 a different church sat there. On the night of Good Friday that year, a gas leak sparked an inferno that destroyed just about all of that building. The next morning, the principal artifact left in the ashes was the steel weathervane that had sat atop the steeple. Wood was in his late twenties then and had been preaching in that pulpit barely two years.
The congregation, a fraction of the size it is now, felt it was profoundly important to have their church anchoring the center of the village. Consequently, they moved the dormant church that existed a half-mile away to the center of town – a Herculean accomplishment financially and logistically, but one that energized the community and the parishioners. When I asked Wood his feelings about this building, the only church I’ve ever known here, he smiled and said, “It can’t not be special to you when you helped roll it on to the foundation. It can’t not be special when you helped paint the ceiling.”
Among Wood’s favorite moments in this church? That August Sunday in 1982, when 300 people packed into the sanctuary for the first service inside the building in its new location; a December Sunday in 1983, the first season they decorated the church for Christmas; and any of the spring or summer days when he has witnessed forty or fifty children running around the church and the grounds as part of Vacation Bible School. Wood estimates that he has held roughly 100 newborn babies from the front of that church and conducted well over 200 weddings. He’s also shepherded his congregation through 300 funerals. There is, for Wood, “a sacredness to the space. It leads me to God, often through the hallowed memory of the folks who have been a part of it all.”
I’ve no idea if I’ll live as long as Ken Hallock or Fletcher Brown. But when I look at the exterior of that sacred space from my porch, it seems to me that it wouldn’t be a bad legacy if someday I’ve told a young buck a third my age that he’s welcome in the church, too – and somehow convinced him to stay.
Happy birthday to the United Church of Lincoln.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on August 4, 2013. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published last month.)
July 27, 2013
Bats in the belfry? Nope, just the kitchen.
Earlier this month at the wildlife sanctuary that I call my house, I caught a bat under a plastic Tupperware layer cake cover. The bat was flapping around the kitchen. The day before that, my wife found a nest with six squeaking baby mice in the closet in our den. And, best of all, we have baby barn swallows about to fly from a nest on a beam in our barn – right above where, before their parents built the best, I parked my car.
Meanwhile, because this summer has been hot and wet, the bugs seem bigger and hungrier than ever. I’ve seen mosquitoes that would have been happy to cage-fight the bat in my kitchen.
Just for the record, the bat did not have a white nose, a sign of white-nose syndrome disease: the illness that has decimated the bat population in the Northeast. It did not seem to be rabid either, but if it was, my family and my cats and I dodged a bullet. It was weeks ago now when – while humming “Born Free” – my wife and I brought the bat to a different part of the barn from where the swallows were nesting, pulled off the cake cover, and watched him disappear. (Just in case, I did report the bat to the Vermont Rabies Hotline. They were not alarmed.)
Our 19-year-old daughter happened to phone from Manhattan while I was trying to lasso the bat. I was wearing long, thick fireplace gloves and a ski mask. I looked like a madman. Her response when I said we had a bat in the kitchen and I’d have to call her back? “Well, that’s a real Vermont problem.”
Yup.
It’s worth nothing that my wife and I are the morons who years ago caught a raccoon that was stumbling around the Lincoln River Road one afternoon in January and brought it to the veterinarian. As a matter of fact, we chased it into the snowy brush by the New Haven River. It had been hit by a car. It lived. But, kids, don’t try this one at home. Don’t try this one anywhere. When a raccoon looks drunk, it might be rabid. Call the Vermont Rabies Hotline.
Incidentally, our bat was no Stellaluna, the adorable bat from Janell Cannon’s classic children’s book that is raised by a family of birds. Our bat was a mouse with wings. I have no idea what it was doing in our kitchen, but it sure wasn’t interested in checking out the cereals in the pantry or grabbing a beer from the fridge. It wanted out. I was happy to oblige.
Now, my wife and I hoped that the bat and the mice would live – we didn’t, for instance, feed them to our six cats – but we really weren’t interested in hanging around with them or watching them grow. On the other hand, we did all that we could to shepherd the baby birds into the sky. We postponed the scheduled installation of the solar panels on our barn roof, which, you can imagine, forever endeared us to the solar panel company. (Actually, I want to give that company a big shout-out. Thank you, Sun Common, for accepting the fact that my wife and I are lunatics and agreeing to install our panels in August instead of July.) And we stopped parking our cars in the barn, so our cats would not be able to use the roofs as launch pads to grab either the parental swallows or the junior birdmen and women as they learned to fly.
In hindsight, we had little to worry about from the cats. It’s an indication of how successful they are as hunters that we have bats and mice in our house in the first place.
Nevertheless, I’m glad that our home has its share of wildlife. Now that our daughter is grown, we need all the chaos we can get.
* * *
Here are two phone numbers it’s worth placing beneath a magnet on your refrigerator if you live in Vermont (if not, your own state is likely to have equivalent departments and hotlines):
The Vermont Rabies Hotline: 1 (800) 472-2437
The Department of Fish and Wildlife: 1 (802) 241-3700
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on July 28, 2013. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published earlier this month.)
Meanwhile, because this summer has been hot and wet, the bugs seem bigger and hungrier than ever. I’ve seen mosquitoes that would have been happy to cage-fight the bat in my kitchen.
Just for the record, the bat did not have a white nose, a sign of white-nose syndrome disease: the illness that has decimated the bat population in the Northeast. It did not seem to be rabid either, but if it was, my family and my cats and I dodged a bullet. It was weeks ago now when – while humming “Born Free” – my wife and I brought the bat to a different part of the barn from where the swallows were nesting, pulled off the cake cover, and watched him disappear. (Just in case, I did report the bat to the Vermont Rabies Hotline. They were not alarmed.)
Our 19-year-old daughter happened to phone from Manhattan while I was trying to lasso the bat. I was wearing long, thick fireplace gloves and a ski mask. I looked like a madman. Her response when I said we had a bat in the kitchen and I’d have to call her back? “Well, that’s a real Vermont problem.”
Yup.
It’s worth nothing that my wife and I are the morons who years ago caught a raccoon that was stumbling around the Lincoln River Road one afternoon in January and brought it to the veterinarian. As a matter of fact, we chased it into the snowy brush by the New Haven River. It had been hit by a car. It lived. But, kids, don’t try this one at home. Don’t try this one anywhere. When a raccoon looks drunk, it might be rabid. Call the Vermont Rabies Hotline.
Incidentally, our bat was no Stellaluna, the adorable bat from Janell Cannon’s classic children’s book that is raised by a family of birds. Our bat was a mouse with wings. I have no idea what it was doing in our kitchen, but it sure wasn’t interested in checking out the cereals in the pantry or grabbing a beer from the fridge. It wanted out. I was happy to oblige.
Now, my wife and I hoped that the bat and the mice would live – we didn’t, for instance, feed them to our six cats – but we really weren’t interested in hanging around with them or watching them grow. On the other hand, we did all that we could to shepherd the baby birds into the sky. We postponed the scheduled installation of the solar panels on our barn roof, which, you can imagine, forever endeared us to the solar panel company. (Actually, I want to give that company a big shout-out. Thank you, Sun Common, for accepting the fact that my wife and I are lunatics and agreeing to install our panels in August instead of July.) And we stopped parking our cars in the barn, so our cats would not be able to use the roofs as launch pads to grab either the parental swallows or the junior birdmen and women as they learned to fly.
In hindsight, we had little to worry about from the cats. It’s an indication of how successful they are as hunters that we have bats and mice in our house in the first place.
Nevertheless, I’m glad that our home has its share of wildlife. Now that our daughter is grown, we need all the chaos we can get.
* * *
Here are two phone numbers it’s worth placing beneath a magnet on your refrigerator if you live in Vermont (if not, your own state is likely to have equivalent departments and hotlines):
The Vermont Rabies Hotline: 1 (800) 472-2437
The Department of Fish and Wildlife: 1 (802) 241-3700
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on July 28, 2013. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published earlier this month.)
July 21, 2013
On the road again: The life that's waiting
Last week a friend of mine asked me why I travel so much when I live in Vermont, a truly beautiful part of the world. There are probably thousands of reasons, but the main one is the little bag of bridge mix that some regional jets provide to make the journey extra fun.
The reality is that most of my travel is for work – book tours and speeches and research – but I know also that travel is good for me. It feeds my soul. The same is true for my wife. There’s that old joke – attributed to both Al Gore and Bill Gates – that “airplane travel is nature’s way of making you look like your passport photo.” We all know that travel can be arduous and degrading. We all know that the away-from-home toilet situation can be terrifying.
But last May I was in a corner of Turkey I couldn’t have found on a map three years ago: The city of Diyarbakir. I was with a half-dozen friends journeying back in time to Historic Armenia and for two nights we stayed there in a hotel that may forever be among my very favorites, even though it was seriously lacking in the amenities we take for granted here in the U.S. Exhibit A? The hotel room doorways were so squat that munchkins from Oz would have had to duck. Even Tyrion Lannister, the sardonic dwarf in “Game of Thrones,” would have vented some serious snark. Behind those doors was a bed about the width of a placemat, a window the size of a shoebox, and a nightstand. It had its own bathroom, but the sink was a cereal bowl. The walls were barren. Not even a bad painting of a horse or a ship.
But here is what I loved about the hotel. It was built between 1521 and 1527 of regal black and white Urfa stones. To this day it boasts stalls for up to 800 camels. We ate buffet breakfasts in a courtyard of Palm Trees and fountains, surrounded by the 70 hotel rooms and their Ottoman arches, and at night we were drinking Efes beer there well past midnight. The hotel was a block from the Byzantine wall that encircles the old city and looks down upon the River Tigris. It is the closest I have ever been to the Middle Eastern world that existed before – and perhaps during – the First World War. I did not merely feel removed from the Green Mountains or reality TV or the bills I had waiting for me at home; I felt removed from the twenty-first century.
Obviously travel is a privilege. I know how lucky I am to be able to travel, for work and for pleasure. But it’s worth noting that my room in this hotel cost about $50 a night. I spent more on beer in Diyarbakir than I spent for a bed.
Likewise, some of my wife’s favorite trips usually involve solitary drives with only her cameras for company through back roads in America’s high plains and southern deserts. She is likely to be staying at motels where the soaps are so small you don’t bother to steal them. But the sense of adventure and exploration is what motivates her – and what feeds her soul.
Sure, we both look like we’re posing for mug shots after some of these journeys. We wish we looked as good as our passport photos. But travel is not about the regional jets with port-a-potties for bathrooms or the rent-a-cars that lack Sirius radios. It’s about discovery and openness and transcendence. It’s about, to quote E. M. Forster, being “willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
And, of course, there is also this reality: When we are done traveling, we always get to come home to Vermont.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on July 21. Chris's new novel, "The Light in the Ruins," was just published.)
The reality is that most of my travel is for work – book tours and speeches and research – but I know also that travel is good for me. It feeds my soul. The same is true for my wife. There’s that old joke – attributed to both Al Gore and Bill Gates – that “airplane travel is nature’s way of making you look like your passport photo.” We all know that travel can be arduous and degrading. We all know that the away-from-home toilet situation can be terrifying.
But last May I was in a corner of Turkey I couldn’t have found on a map three years ago: The city of Diyarbakir. I was with a half-dozen friends journeying back in time to Historic Armenia and for two nights we stayed there in a hotel that may forever be among my very favorites, even though it was seriously lacking in the amenities we take for granted here in the U.S. Exhibit A? The hotel room doorways were so squat that munchkins from Oz would have had to duck. Even Tyrion Lannister, the sardonic dwarf in “Game of Thrones,” would have vented some serious snark. Behind those doors was a bed about the width of a placemat, a window the size of a shoebox, and a nightstand. It had its own bathroom, but the sink was a cereal bowl. The walls were barren. Not even a bad painting of a horse or a ship.
But here is what I loved about the hotel. It was built between 1521 and 1527 of regal black and white Urfa stones. To this day it boasts stalls for up to 800 camels. We ate buffet breakfasts in a courtyard of Palm Trees and fountains, surrounded by the 70 hotel rooms and their Ottoman arches, and at night we were drinking Efes beer there well past midnight. The hotel was a block from the Byzantine wall that encircles the old city and looks down upon the River Tigris. It is the closest I have ever been to the Middle Eastern world that existed before – and perhaps during – the First World War. I did not merely feel removed from the Green Mountains or reality TV or the bills I had waiting for me at home; I felt removed from the twenty-first century.
Obviously travel is a privilege. I know how lucky I am to be able to travel, for work and for pleasure. But it’s worth noting that my room in this hotel cost about $50 a night. I spent more on beer in Diyarbakir than I spent for a bed.
Likewise, some of my wife’s favorite trips usually involve solitary drives with only her cameras for company through back roads in America’s high plains and southern deserts. She is likely to be staying at motels where the soaps are so small you don’t bother to steal them. But the sense of adventure and exploration is what motivates her – and what feeds her soul.
Sure, we both look like we’re posing for mug shots after some of these journeys. We wish we looked as good as our passport photos. But travel is not about the regional jets with port-a-potties for bathrooms or the rent-a-cars that lack Sirius radios. It’s about discovery and openness and transcendence. It’s about, to quote E. M. Forster, being “willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
And, of course, there is also this reality: When we are done traveling, we always get to come home to Vermont.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on July 21. Chris's new novel, "The Light in the Ruins," was just published.)
July 14, 2013
"The Light in the Ruins" Rock and Roll Book Tour -- Week One
Greetings!
It's been a really lovely first week on the road, thanks to all of you who I've had the pleasure of meeting at eight events in eight states.
I can't thank you all enough for your faith in my work.
I'm thrilled that I still have eleven events left, from Seattle to San Diego to picturesque Canaan, NH. I hope you can join me.
And the first reviews of "The Light in the Ruins?"
Here you go:
"Beautifully structured, written with restrained intensity and suspenseful to the end, this is both a satisfying mystery and a gut-wrenching account of moral dilemma in a time of moral struggle." -- Robin Micheli, People Magazine, 4-star Review
"The Light in the Ruins elucidates, haunts and raises moral quandaries...Bohjalian's historical retelling is riveting...A memorable read."-- Claudia Puig, USA Today
"One of the fifteen best books of summer. . .A picturesque page turner."
-- Good Housekeeping
"With each book, Bohjalian flexes his literary muscles, crafting a ghost story, historical fiction, and now police procedural. . .[Bohjalian] is skilled at evoking the sepia-tinged past." -- Tina Jordan, Entertainment Weekly
"The subtlety and language of a literary novelist...The denouement is dead solid perfect. Bohjalian has written another winner." -- Curt Schleier, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"Bohjalian raises questions about the nature of injustice and the often arbitrary codes we deploy in order to keep a firm grasp on right and wrong, good and evil, or hero and villain. The Light in the Ruins offers an engaging story that unspools in such a way as to keep the reader with her nose to the pages long after the light has actually faded." -- Sheila Moeschen, New York Journal of Books
"At the heart of a good novel is a good story, and this story is a doozy. Bohjalian expertly weaves together a tale of how the war split Italy between the people who willingly collaborated with the Germans and the ones who did not. . .Not every author could manage to tell a war story, throw in a serial killer and drop in several interesting romances, but Bohjalian manages." -- Amanda St. Amand, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Historic fiction at its very finest...This novel moves with the heat and inexorable flow of lava. Not to be missed." -- Edmund August, Louisville Courier-Journal
"A brilliant blend of historical fiction and a chilling serial killer story...a page-turner that the reader will not soon forget." -- Deborah Donovan, BookPage
"Masterfully crafted...a near-perfect blend of historical fiction, mystery, and suspense." -- Brighid Moret, The Washington Times
"A masterpiece. . .a terrific read that will transport both long-time fans and newcomers back in time to one of the most turbulent periods in Italian history." -- Ray Palen, BookReporter
"Thoroughly gripping, beautiful, and astonishingly vengeful, this novel is a heartbreaker. Bohjalian's latest turn to historical fiction is immensely rewarding."
-- Julie Kane, Library Journal -- starred review
"Mastering matters subtle and grotesque, Bohjalian combines intricate plotting and bewitching sensuality with historical insight and a profound sense of place to create an exceptional work of suspense rooted in the tragic aberrations of war."
-- Donna Seaman, Booklist -- starred review
"A taut, suspenseful page-turner...Bohjalian effortlessly turns a work of historical fiction into a breathless whodunit." -- Wendy Plotkin, The Armenian Weekly
"A riveting re-creation of a time and a place long gone, but not forgotten."
-- Valerie Ryan, Shelf Awareness
"A literary thriller. . .a soulful why-done-it."
-- Kirkus Reviews
"An exploration of post-WWII Italy doubles as a murder mystery in this well-crafted novel. . .an entertaining historical whodunit."
-- Publishers Weekly
"The Light in the Ruins" is also one of Barnes & Noble's "Best Books of July" and one of Oprah Magazine's "Ten Titles to Pick Up Right Now."
Fingers crossed my work never disappoints you -- and I meet many of you in the coming two weeks.
Truly, I get to do what I do because all of you. . .and I will never forget that. Truly.
Sincerely,
Chris B.
It's been a really lovely first week on the road, thanks to all of you who I've had the pleasure of meeting at eight events in eight states.
I can't thank you all enough for your faith in my work.
I'm thrilled that I still have eleven events left, from Seattle to San Diego to picturesque Canaan, NH. I hope you can join me.
And the first reviews of "The Light in the Ruins?"
Here you go:
"Beautifully structured, written with restrained intensity and suspenseful to the end, this is both a satisfying mystery and a gut-wrenching account of moral dilemma in a time of moral struggle." -- Robin Micheli, People Magazine, 4-star Review
"The Light in the Ruins elucidates, haunts and raises moral quandaries...Bohjalian's historical retelling is riveting...A memorable read."-- Claudia Puig, USA Today
"One of the fifteen best books of summer. . .A picturesque page turner."
-- Good Housekeeping
"With each book, Bohjalian flexes his literary muscles, crafting a ghost story, historical fiction, and now police procedural. . .[Bohjalian] is skilled at evoking the sepia-tinged past." -- Tina Jordan, Entertainment Weekly
"The subtlety and language of a literary novelist...The denouement is dead solid perfect. Bohjalian has written another winner." -- Curt Schleier, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"Bohjalian raises questions about the nature of injustice and the often arbitrary codes we deploy in order to keep a firm grasp on right and wrong, good and evil, or hero and villain. The Light in the Ruins offers an engaging story that unspools in such a way as to keep the reader with her nose to the pages long after the light has actually faded." -- Sheila Moeschen, New York Journal of Books
"At the heart of a good novel is a good story, and this story is a doozy. Bohjalian expertly weaves together a tale of how the war split Italy between the people who willingly collaborated with the Germans and the ones who did not. . .Not every author could manage to tell a war story, throw in a serial killer and drop in several interesting romances, but Bohjalian manages." -- Amanda St. Amand, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Historic fiction at its very finest...This novel moves with the heat and inexorable flow of lava. Not to be missed." -- Edmund August, Louisville Courier-Journal
"A brilliant blend of historical fiction and a chilling serial killer story...a page-turner that the reader will not soon forget." -- Deborah Donovan, BookPage
"Masterfully crafted...a near-perfect blend of historical fiction, mystery, and suspense." -- Brighid Moret, The Washington Times
"A masterpiece. . .a terrific read that will transport both long-time fans and newcomers back in time to one of the most turbulent periods in Italian history." -- Ray Palen, BookReporter
"Thoroughly gripping, beautiful, and astonishingly vengeful, this novel is a heartbreaker. Bohjalian's latest turn to historical fiction is immensely rewarding."
-- Julie Kane, Library Journal -- starred review
"Mastering matters subtle and grotesque, Bohjalian combines intricate plotting and bewitching sensuality with historical insight and a profound sense of place to create an exceptional work of suspense rooted in the tragic aberrations of war."
-- Donna Seaman, Booklist -- starred review
"A taut, suspenseful page-turner...Bohjalian effortlessly turns a work of historical fiction into a breathless whodunit." -- Wendy Plotkin, The Armenian Weekly
"A riveting re-creation of a time and a place long gone, but not forgotten."
-- Valerie Ryan, Shelf Awareness
"A literary thriller. . .a soulful why-done-it."
-- Kirkus Reviews
"An exploration of post-WWII Italy doubles as a murder mystery in this well-crafted novel. . .an entertaining historical whodunit."
-- Publishers Weekly
"The Light in the Ruins" is also one of Barnes & Noble's "Best Books of July" and one of Oprah Magazine's "Ten Titles to Pick Up Right Now."
Fingers crossed my work never disappoints you -- and I meet many of you in the coming two weeks.
Truly, I get to do what I do because all of you. . .and I will never forget that. Truly.
Sincerely,
Chris B.
July 8, 2013
No more teasers. No need. It's here.
"The Light in the Ruins elucidates, haunts and raises moral quandaries...Bohjalian's historical retelling is riveting...A memorable read."
— USA Today
July 8, 2013
Dear Friends who Read and Readers who are Friends,
Right now stores around the country are unpacking their boxes of The Light in the Ruins and placing the book on tables and shelves and displays. I am packing for the "Beware the Chimera" rock and roll book tour: 19 cities in 19 days, including 7 with my great friend, Stephen Kiernan, author of The Curiosity. The t-shirt cannons are shipped to the stores and loaded. I begin the tour tonight in Burlington. Tomorrow is Manhattan and northern New Jersey. By the end of next week, I will have traveled from Raleigh to Seattle to San Diego, with many stops in between. I hope you can join me. (Click here for the full list of venues.)
The novel may have had its origins as a re-imagining of "Romeo and Juliet" when I was watching my daughter as a Shark girlfriend in "West Side Story." Or it may have begun when I was standing next to my friend, Greg Levendusky, our bikes beside us, on a hill looking out at the Tuscan village of Montisi.
"See that granary tower," he asked me.
I did. It towered over the town. It was, literally, medieval. A lot of Montisi is. It was inspired by the renowned Torre del Mangia in Siena: A classic castle on a chess board.
"In 1944, the Nazis tried to blow it up when they were retreating north through Tuscany," he told me. "As you can see, they failed. They only blew off the top half."
It's hard today to imagine Tuscany as a battleground, but of course it was. For parts of 1944, it was an innermost ring of Dante's inferno. I knew this from a memoir that my bookseller friend, Michael Barnard, had recommended I read years ago, before my first visit Tuscany.
Looking back at these moments, I'm honestly not sure which was the kernel that led to The Light in the Ruins. The love story? Or was it the way one of the most beautiful corners of Europe was savaged by the Second World War, and Italian peasants were the grass beneath battling elephants' feet?
Either way, I know this: I loved writing this novel, and spending time with my fictional friends — Serafina and Cristina and, yes, someone who, years later, is out for revenge.
So far, the novel has been called "bewitching" by Booklist, "a soulful why-done-it" by Kirkus, and "a picturesque page turner" by Good Housekeeping. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune called it "dead solid perfect," and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch concluded, "At the heart of a good novel is a good story, and this story is a doozy."
I hope you enjoy reading it, too,
And, of course, if you want to learn more about the novel, visit my web site: www.chrisbohjalian.com. The latest reviews are right here.
Or follow me on Facebook or Twitter, as well as right here on Goodreads.
That's one of the nice things about the digital age. I'm not hard to find — online and, for the next few weeks, in person.
As always, I thank you all so much for your faith in my work. Truly.
All the best,
Chris B.
www.chrisbohjalian.com
or www.facebook.com
— USA Today
July 8, 2013
Dear Friends who Read and Readers who are Friends,
Right now stores around the country are unpacking their boxes of The Light in the Ruins and placing the book on tables and shelves and displays. I am packing for the "Beware the Chimera" rock and roll book tour: 19 cities in 19 days, including 7 with my great friend, Stephen Kiernan, author of The Curiosity. The t-shirt cannons are shipped to the stores and loaded. I begin the tour tonight in Burlington. Tomorrow is Manhattan and northern New Jersey. By the end of next week, I will have traveled from Raleigh to Seattle to San Diego, with many stops in between. I hope you can join me. (Click here for the full list of venues.)
The novel may have had its origins as a re-imagining of "Romeo and Juliet" when I was watching my daughter as a Shark girlfriend in "West Side Story." Or it may have begun when I was standing next to my friend, Greg Levendusky, our bikes beside us, on a hill looking out at the Tuscan village of Montisi.
"See that granary tower," he asked me.
I did. It towered over the town. It was, literally, medieval. A lot of Montisi is. It was inspired by the renowned Torre del Mangia in Siena: A classic castle on a chess board.
"In 1944, the Nazis tried to blow it up when they were retreating north through Tuscany," he told me. "As you can see, they failed. They only blew off the top half."
It's hard today to imagine Tuscany as a battleground, but of course it was. For parts of 1944, it was an innermost ring of Dante's inferno. I knew this from a memoir that my bookseller friend, Michael Barnard, had recommended I read years ago, before my first visit Tuscany.
Looking back at these moments, I'm honestly not sure which was the kernel that led to The Light in the Ruins. The love story? Or was it the way one of the most beautiful corners of Europe was savaged by the Second World War, and Italian peasants were the grass beneath battling elephants' feet?
Either way, I know this: I loved writing this novel, and spending time with my fictional friends — Serafina and Cristina and, yes, someone who, years later, is out for revenge.
So far, the novel has been called "bewitching" by Booklist, "a soulful why-done-it" by Kirkus, and "a picturesque page turner" by Good Housekeeping. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune called it "dead solid perfect," and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch concluded, "At the heart of a good novel is a good story, and this story is a doozy."
I hope you enjoy reading it, too,
And, of course, if you want to learn more about the novel, visit my web site: www.chrisbohjalian.com. The latest reviews are right here.
Or follow me on Facebook or Twitter, as well as right here on Goodreads.
That's one of the nice things about the digital age. I'm not hard to find — online and, for the next few weeks, in person.
As always, I thank you all so much for your faith in my work. Truly.
All the best,
Chris B.
www.chrisbohjalian.com
or www.facebook.com
July 7, 2013
Ashes to ashes: The last good-bye
After my mother died in 1995, my family and I sprinkled her ashes in the Gulf of Mexico. She had smoked the vast majority of her life and so it was fitting that she wanted to be cremated. I remember being struck by the reality that ashes are ashes. As we ladled my mother into the sea, I was reminded of the thousands of times I had emptied ashtrays around the house when I was growing up.
Last week, not quite eighteen years later, my family and I deposited my father’s ashes in a stretch of water not all that far from where we had left my mother. We were near Captiva Island on Florida’s Gulf Coast. My father’s ashes struck me as finer than my mother’s, but this might very well have been a trick of memory. My father died in 2011 of a cerebral aneurysm. He hated the beach, but he loved my mother, and so he wanted to be – more or less – with her. As we watched the ashes dissipate in the water, my brother remarked that this was one of the only times when our father was in the ocean and in no danger of drowning. My brother was right: Our father wasn’t a strong swimmer. He always preferred the pool.
In the two years since my father died, his ashes had sat beneath my aunt’s – his sister’s – bed in South Florida. My father and my uncle were great friends, and my aunt would joke that they were fine together under there. They were playing cards. They were arguing about politics. They were discussing their grandchildren.
But both my aunt and I felt the need to fulfill my father’s desire to be reunited in the water with my mother. It took us two years to accomplish this principally because I am a derelict son and always found excuses not to complete this one last task.
And yet I wonder if, on some level, there was another reason why I kept stalling. When we were pouring my father little by little into the light chop, I was struck by the utter finality of the gesture – by the way this was our final parting. When we had brought my mother’s ashes to the Gulf of Mexico, it was close enough to her death that my father was reeling and my brother and I were numb.
How long ago was 1995? My daughter was a toddler skipping obliviously (and adorably) along the surf while an Episcopal priest eulogized her grandmother. Now she is 19, flew to Florida from Manhattan where she lives alone, and spoke at the small memorial. She had been visiting her grandfather with me on the day he died. I was proud of her in 1995; I was proud of her that day two years ago when her grandfather passed away; and I was proud of her last month.
My brother and my aunt and I discussed whether we should put all of the ashes in the water or whether – for instance – I should bring some with me to Armenia when I am traveling there in August. “There might be some left over,” my aunt observed.
“This isn’t a lasagna,” my brother said, shaking his head. “I don’t think we’re going to have leftovers.”
He was making us laugh, which he is very good at, but I also understood the underlying wisdom of what he was saying. We had drawn this out a long time. It was time to let go.
And so, quite literally, we did. We all did. We let my dad slip into the waters where, once upon a time, a similarly homeopathic rendering of my mother was left to drift. My father may not have been a fan of the beach, but now he is where he always was happiest – with my mother.
Good-bye, Dad. Godspeed. Farewell.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on July 7, 2013. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” goes on sale on Tuesday.)
Last week, not quite eighteen years later, my family and I deposited my father’s ashes in a stretch of water not all that far from where we had left my mother. We were near Captiva Island on Florida’s Gulf Coast. My father’s ashes struck me as finer than my mother’s, but this might very well have been a trick of memory. My father died in 2011 of a cerebral aneurysm. He hated the beach, but he loved my mother, and so he wanted to be – more or less – with her. As we watched the ashes dissipate in the water, my brother remarked that this was one of the only times when our father was in the ocean and in no danger of drowning. My brother was right: Our father wasn’t a strong swimmer. He always preferred the pool.
In the two years since my father died, his ashes had sat beneath my aunt’s – his sister’s – bed in South Florida. My father and my uncle were great friends, and my aunt would joke that they were fine together under there. They were playing cards. They were arguing about politics. They were discussing their grandchildren.
But both my aunt and I felt the need to fulfill my father’s desire to be reunited in the water with my mother. It took us two years to accomplish this principally because I am a derelict son and always found excuses not to complete this one last task.
And yet I wonder if, on some level, there was another reason why I kept stalling. When we were pouring my father little by little into the light chop, I was struck by the utter finality of the gesture – by the way this was our final parting. When we had brought my mother’s ashes to the Gulf of Mexico, it was close enough to her death that my father was reeling and my brother and I were numb.
How long ago was 1995? My daughter was a toddler skipping obliviously (and adorably) along the surf while an Episcopal priest eulogized her grandmother. Now she is 19, flew to Florida from Manhattan where she lives alone, and spoke at the small memorial. She had been visiting her grandfather with me on the day he died. I was proud of her in 1995; I was proud of her that day two years ago when her grandfather passed away; and I was proud of her last month.
My brother and my aunt and I discussed whether we should put all of the ashes in the water or whether – for instance – I should bring some with me to Armenia when I am traveling there in August. “There might be some left over,” my aunt observed.
“This isn’t a lasagna,” my brother said, shaking his head. “I don’t think we’re going to have leftovers.”
He was making us laugh, which he is very good at, but I also understood the underlying wisdom of what he was saying. We had drawn this out a long time. It was time to let go.
And so, quite literally, we did. We all did. We let my dad slip into the waters where, once upon a time, a similarly homeopathic rendering of my mother was left to drift. My father may not have been a fan of the beach, but now he is where he always was happiest – with my mother.
Good-bye, Dad. Godspeed. Farewell.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on July 7, 2013. Chris’s new novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” goes on sale on Tuesday.)
