Grateful for the opportunity to reach this as part of a local book club discussion - now to find time to read Kite Runner. ( )

I found this book by Khaled Hosseini to be better than the Kite Runner in many ways. I appreciate the dialogue that exists throughout most of the book between the two main female characters, and I enjoyed reading a highly fiction account of two women's lives as seen from the perspective of a male.

The two main characters provide a stark contrast to each other, yet as the book progresses develop a very close and loyal relationship as the dual wives of one husband. I only wish that the happy ending had not been so overcooked. ( )

The Review

Last year, I read and reviewed The Kite Runner (both the book and the movie). I absolutely loved this book and rated it a 5 out of 5. I wasn’t sure how A Thousand Splendid Suns would compare, however I was more than pleased to discover that my book club had chosen it for the June selection. Months ago I ordered it and it waited patiently on my bookshelf… calling out my name! I couldn’t wait a moment after the May book club meeting was over. Now I could read the next selection… and see if Khaled Hosseini would provide an equally wonderful book. He did!

This is the story of two remarkably strong women. Mariam is born the illegitimate child of a wealthy man, already married to multiple wives with many children. Mariam’s mother, Nana, was a worker in their home and was quickly cast out one the wives determined that she was impregnated by Mariam’s father, Jalil. However, Jalil and his men build a small dwelling on the outskirts of town for Nana and Mariam. Faithfully, each week Jalil visits his daughter. Nana suffers from extreme depression and a seizure disorder. She doesn’t treat her daughter with the love and tenderness that you’d expect from a typical mother. She insists that Mariam always stay with her in this small hillside home. However, one day Mariam ventures out to Jalil’s palace to visit her father and his other family. Unfortunately, she is cast out and not allowed to visit their home as she is a disgrace to their family. Upon her return to her home, Mariam discovers Nana hanging from a noose in a tree. Mariam is briefly taken in by Jalil, but is soon shipped off to Kabul to marry a much older man, Rasheed.

Rasheed is a nightmare of a husband and eventually Mariam is a victim of domestic abuse. After several failed pregnancies and beatings, Mariam lives a dark, lonely life in Kabul. Her neighbor, Laila, is born. In this duration, there are wars emerging and their beloved city is under siege. The novel shifts gears over to Laila’s life and you learn about her story until her parents untimely death when she is a teenager. The death was due to a bomb that exploded in her home while she was outside of it. Mariam comes to her rescue and their lives are intertwined thereafter permanently.

This book was so utterly heartbreaking, however I just could not put it down. Learning about what this country went through, politically and religiously, was overwhelmingly sad. As stated in the Afterword of this book:

“For almost three decades now, the Afghan refugee crisis has been one of the most severe around the globe. War, hunger, anarchy, and oppression forced millions of people - like Tariq and his family in this tale - to abandon their homes and flee Afghanistan to settle in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. At the height of the exodus, as many as eight million Afghans were living abroad as refugees. Today, more than two million Afghan refugees remain in Pakistan.”

One of my favorite quotes from this book:

“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”

On Sher’s “Out of Ten Scale:”

This novel is a piece of literature that is compelling, dramatic, sorrowful, and redeeming, all at once. I wasn’t sure that I would like this book more than The Kite Runner, but I did! For the genre Fiction:Historical, I am rating A Thousand Splendid Suns 10 OUT OF 10! I read this book as part of our book club reading agenda and I am confident that this will make A GREAT BOOK CLUB discussion! ( )

wishlist

Liked this book even better than Kite Runner, Hosseini's best-seller, because it ended on a more hopeful note. Of course, it saddened me to realize that Afghanistan has taken a turn for the worse since this book has been published, so maybe the ending should be revised NOT to be so hopeful, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

Mariam's story is skillfully written, and deeply moving. Through it one can see the reality of Afghani life under Soviet, mujahideen, and Taliban rule. While a fictional story, Suns is also chock-full of historical fact, so the book is worth reading for more than just its literary and entertainment value. In his acknowledgements, Hosseini thanks his mother "whose character runs through the whole book," which leads me to assume that he based the character of Mariam on her. And once you get to know Mariam, I promise you'll want to meet Khaled Hosseini's mother, too. ( )