The Bullet Collection [Hardcover]

Patricia Sarrafian Ward (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 5, 2003

“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, 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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In Ward's powerful debut novel, two sisters and their Beirut family serve as a microcosm for all the resiliency and magic of that war-torn city and all the tragedy of the endless bloodshed in the Middle East. Marianna narrates this brooding, poetic, and startlingly insightful tale of female coming-of-age in a time of war, beginning as a child enthralled by her fierce, preternaturally competent older sister, Alaine, and moving into her eighteenth year. Alaine, dark and wiry, takes after their Armenian Egyptian mother, while blond Marianna resembles their American father, making her an outsider in the land of her birth. Alaine attempts to establish order and objectify her despair by collecting bullets, but she is eventually overwhelmed by a violently self-destructive form of depression. Marianna avidly witnesses the suffering all around her, until, safe if unhappy in exile in America, she finally falls prey to her own nearly fatal tsunami of desolation. As somber as this novel of war is, it is also lyrical and sustaining as Ward, who grew up in Beirut, conveys with remarkable accuracy and heart the fact that the most deliciously ordinary aspects of the life of a curious, envious, fantasy-prone young girl persist in even the most extraordinary circumstances. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press (March 5, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555973760
• ISBN-13: 978-1555973766
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,819,563 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting--and timely, April 29, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Bullet Collection (Hardcover)

I bought this book after wandering into a reading given by the author--although it isn't an easy read, the effort is rewarded many times over, with Ms Ward's emotion caming through on every page. She obviously poured quite a bit of her life into the book, and the emotion tranlates to a haunting story of relationships and familial connections in a time of war. I found this especially timely against the background of our involvement in Iraq, when so often I am preoccupied with thoughts of the future. The Bullet Collection reminds us of the real people and continuing effect of war on children and the adults they become.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this book is incredible..., October 11, 2004

By 

M. Machledt (Holland, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bullet Collection (Hardcover)

Her prose is crystalline and delicate, and through her words, the beauty and aching of a life in transition glimmer like cut glass. Her young narrator, Marianna, yearns to construct definitions of home, living and loving that fit the ground beneath her feet. With an astute awareness of the brokenness within and around each of us, Marianna echoes truth in gorgeous and alarming ways. At once wistful, stunning and heartbreaking, Patricia's characters have reached me at unforgettable depths, and i strongly recommend this book... her GLCA New Writers award is well deserved! Find out for yourself!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written and intriguingly touching ..., November 10, 2003

By 

Lina Fairchild (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bullet Collection (Hardcover)

"The magic of Lebanon infects any person born there and any visitor who steps onto the land for even just one day," writes Patricia Ward in her story about troubled teenage sisters in war-torn Beirut. The narrator, Marianna, and her sister are the offspring of an American/Armenian marriage. In this deeply personal coming-of-age novel each sister struggles to survive a near-fatal depression that is her own internal civil war. Marianna tells how her world grows smaller and smaller, until there is only her room-and then only her memories of a Lebanon both real and imagined. The adults in the sisters' lives inhabit an unreal world of denial, where civil war and depression are interspersed with hopeful truces, and family gatherings in the fresh piney mountains above the city prom-ise that all will soon be well. The sisters know better-or do they? "What is this magic, this country that insists on being remembered even after forcing us to leave?" Good memories and bad can be equally haunting, and even when Ward writes of despair, her prose is lyrically poetic.
-WILLIAM TRACY