The Bullet Collection: A Novel

by Patricia Sarrafian Ward

Overview

"Passionate, lyrical, and deeply humane, this tale of two sisters caught in a war without end moves effortlessly through space and time . . . an astonishing first novel." —Andrea Barrett

Marianna watches her older sister Alaine collect the detritus of war from around Beirut—bullets, shrapnel, grenades, a gas mask. These objects, some taken from dead bodies, catalogue Alaine's retreat into a dangerous depression. As the family struggles to endure the daily violence of the Middle East conflict, it is Marianna who becomes her older sister's keeper, watching for any signal that might trigger one of Alaine's frequent, grim excavations. But once the family escapes to America, Alaine's newfound contentment is as alien to Marianna as her madness once was. As Marianna longs for her beloved, war-torn home, she struggles to understand that now she is the difficult sister.

In lyrical, dreamlike prose, The Bullet Collection by Patricia Sarrafian Ward mines both the stunning, exotic landscape of Beirut and the pure, defiant landscape of a child's heart, and shows how war leaves its indelible scars on both.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555972998
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	12/03/2013
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Patricia Sarrafian Ward was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, and came to the U.S. when she was eighteen. She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from the University of Michigan. The Bullet Collection received the GLCA New Writers Award, the Anahid Literary Award and the Hala Maksoud Award for Outstanding Emerging Writers. Ward is also an accomplished book artist, making small-scale books and dioramas that have been exhibited in a number of galleries and juried shows. She currently lives outside of Boston with her husband and son. Website: www.patriciasarrafianward.com

Editorial Reviews

The Bullet Collection] shows stunningly, profoundly, the depth of the tragedy of Lebanon and offers, so slightly, the hope of salvation.
—Beirut January 21st, 2003

The Daily Star

War and the tumult of adolescence leave their scars on the hearts of two Beirut-born sisters in this sharply drawn, moving debut about a family in exile. Marianna is 18 when her family-her older sister, Alaine; her Lebanese mother and her American father-flee their upper-class home in Beirut for New England in the 1980s. In Beirut, the cryptic, self-contained Alaine had been the difficult daughter; she was depressed and attempted suicide. For much of her youth, she kept a macabre collection of bullets, shrapnel and other war mementos. Marianna had idolized her, and at the same time felt it was her duty to be cheerful and spare her parents more worry. When the family moves to its sagging, shabby American house, the sisters reverse roles: Marianna finds their reduced circumstances and unfamiliar surroundings unbearable. She can barely get out of bed and feels betrayed when Alaine merrily immerses herself in home improvement projects, determined to adjust to their new future. Marianna narrates the story, weaving episodes from their lives in Beirut-ordinary adolescent milestones mingled with the horrors of war-with scenes of their present-day struggles in the U.S. Ward paints a vivid tableau that will be familiar to exiles everywhere: the father, a historian in Beirut, applying for a manager's job at the local supermarket; the familiar traditional meals that taste ineffably different in the new country; the parents gamely trying to rally their children's spirits while liable themselves to burst into tears or sink unexpectedly into grim silence. (May) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Like notable Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh, Ward was born in Beirut and focuses her skills on her war-torn homeland. Her novel, which is told from the uncommon perspective of a young girl named Marianna, brings to life the daily brutality of Lebanon's civil war of 1970s. Ward lyrically communicates how easily the perils of war become almost mundane. Most dramatically affected by the war is Marianna's older sister, Alaine, who escapes their parents' scrutiny to excavate battle sites. But even as she builds her collection of war relics-bullets, grenades, and shrapnel-she sinks into deep depression. Eventually, the family flees to America, but hope barely glimmers in this fresh, unnamed setting. Here it is the once innocent Marianna's turn to descend into homesickness and gloom, and she soon becomes the center of her family's grief. This change in status perplexes her, and she is maddened by the family's unwillingness to discuss their shared past. With this debut novel, Ward emerges boldly from the ranks of Arab women writers and proves to be a writer to watch. Recommended for all libraries.-Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of Oregon Libs., Eugene Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In a meandering, densely impressionist debut, a pair of Armenian-American Lebanese sisters experience the disintegration of personality in war-torn Beirut. From a distance of several months in exile in New England, first-person narrator Marianna tentatively reconstructs the shattering events that finally force her family out of Beirut in the late '80s. The family-gentle, professor father, who lived in America thirty years before; lovely, retreating mother, who is partly Armenian; glum older sister, Alaine, who collects shrapnel and grenades in her "bullet collection"; and quietly inquisitive, blond-haired Marianna-intended to leave by 1976, after the first bombs begin to fall around their apartment house. Yet they stayed to witness bloodshed by succeeding foreign armies of Syrian, Palestinian, Israeli, French, and American troops, in a bizarre suspension of real life when the girls must still attend school, meals must be prepared, and the semblance of social life maintained. In gossamer spirals of nostalgia, Ward gradually fills in her portrait of the family's bizarre life of violence. There's numbed denial as teenaged Alaine embarks on a death-defying pattern of running away and self-mutilation, while Marianna, in copy-cat retaliation, skips school and attempts repeated overdoses-unable to resist "the drug of dying." Definitive events include the shady killing of Marianna's dreamy handsome cousin and first crush, Ziad; her befriending of a French soldier, Paul, hideously wounded in the bloody aftermath of the American embassy bombing; and the inexplicable kidnapping and shooting of Uncle Bernie. Ward orders her circuitous tale only by seasons, backtracking years behind, thenfast-forwarding to the family's sad, listless exile in America in what is perhaps an imitation of the erratic workings of childhood memory. Yet the reader is frequently befuddled by shifting time and distance, overloaded by layers of frequently repetitive description, and unable to penetrate Marianna's adolescent veils of justification to feel true compassion for these characters. Still, a near-mesmerizing vision of a complex and vanished past.

Kirkus Reviews