Bullet Collection (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781555972998)

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.

Author: Patricia Sarrafian Ward
ISBN-10: 1555972993
ISBN-13: 9781555972998
Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
Language: English
Published: 12/03/2013
Pages: 320
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.04lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.72d