Book review: “The Kite Runner” & “A Thousand Splendid Suns”

I discovered the wonder of Khaled Hosseini late. After his books had achieved critical acclaim and he even had a movie made out of one.

There’s little left to be said about his engaging narrative which draws in the reader. He creates a world which begins with the first word and stays with you beyond the last. He involves you in the lives which unfold across the pages and despite having his stories set against a bold cultural backdrop the challenges, failures and triumphs he details are ones which every reader can identify with and most importantly feel for.

A critic may sit and examine prose, grammar, sentence structures, the use of allegories etc but for me the acid test is but one. The moment I pick up a book and begin to read the world outside should melt away. For both these books the world melted away and at times to such a degree that what I read aroused in me such emotion I was forced to disengage, stop and just think on what I had read and felt.

My sister made a comment once I finished “ATSS”. She said that she felt more for the characters in this book as opposed to “TKR” because “ATSS” revolved around women and their pains. I must confess to not having that same reaction. For me what impacted me was the absolute way he had managed to capture the evil within nature’s worst animal..MAN. The obvious flaws in each character made them identifiable and perhaps a mirror of what was within to some degree or other.

The movie….well….I’m not a fan of any movie adaptation. I like the full-length, full-colour version I see in my mind much more than the invariably abbreviated one that makes it to the big screen. The one big problem I had with the movie was the casting of ‘Baba’. The larger than life man who could wrestle a bear and take up the fight for others was done, in my opinion, little justice by the actor selected. Though charismatic he failed to capture the joie-de-vivre that I had come to expect from my reading of the book. An interesting watch none the less.

One catch-up post down…a million more to go.

Enjoy the rest of your week