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4.48 AVERAGE
4.48 AVERAGE
this book is devastating. it is beautifully written. it will make you cry.
read it !
read it !
This book is compelling and beautiful, and much less bleak or traumatic than The Kite Runner. It's more delicate, maybe because the main characters are women. It's so good that it transcends my fatigue regarding immersion into the Islamic culture. It gets to the inherent humanity, though I do tire of the violence and misogynistic themes that dominate these stories (and culture). Just as I cannot bear to read one more historical fiction set in the Spanish Inquisition, it's horrors are incomprehensible that explaining them a million ways only demonstrates futility. I will never get it. And while a book this good can make me see past it, it's like looking through a window in a wall I can never climb over.
This was a better book, in my opinion, than "Kite Runner", perhaps due to the nature of the characters and the trials and tribulations facing women in Middle Eastern countries.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
emotional
sad
There are so many emotions in this book. Started off slow, but picked up and then I couldn't put it down.
A captivating and heat-wrenching book on what it's like to be a woman in an oppressive and religiously brainwashed society. This book internalizes the essence of what's called 'endless tragedy'; just when you think nothing more can happen, it happens.
“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”
This is a story of two girls, Mariam and Laila and how the majority of their life is spent struggling, being subject to oppression in Afghanistan. Sometimes I felt that Hosseini made the situation his characters were in to be too unbelievably tragic, but I suppose it only seems unbelievable to someone like me which only makes me marvel at the brilliance of the author. I loved the cliff hanger aspect during the entire novel. At the end of each chapter, the author left the reader in anticipation to what was to come next by almost ending reaching a mini-climax forcing the reader to move the next chapter.
"I know you’re still young, but I want you to understand and learn this now, he said. Marriage can wait, education cannot. You’re a very, very bright girl. Truly, you are. You can be anything you want, Laila. I know this about you. And I also know that when this war is over, Afghanistan is going to need you as much as its men, maybe even more. Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated, Laila. No chance.
I loved the feminist aspect of this book. Hosseini showed his two main characters as unbelievably strong women, the amount of @*#& they handled and went through, the pain (physical along with the emotional), i doubt anyone else could could have. This book takes a very alternative aspect of convincing the reader of the state of the two women. Instead of taking the radical feminist approach which has a staunch disapproval for anything containing even the slightest hints of gender bias and prejudice, he portrays their lives in such a way that any reader of sound reason will and have to come to the conclusion that what they went through, all the challenges that they faced just because they were born without a penis was WRONG
Some of the passages that I really loved:
"People, she believed now, shouldn’t be allowed to have new children if they’d already given away all their love to their old ones. It wasn’t fair."
In Tariq’s grimace, Laila learned that boys differed from girls in this regard. They didn’t make a show of friendship. They felt no urge, no need, for this sort of talk. Laila imagined it had been this way for her brothers too. Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly.
Laila, my love, the only enemy an Afghan cannot defeat is himself.
"You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you just have to see and feel.”
“You know the old bit,” he said. “You’re on a deserted island. You can have five books. Which do you choose? I never thought I’d actually have to.”
We are city people, you and I, but she is dehati. A village girl. Not even a village girl. No. She grew up in a kolba made of mud outside the village. Her father put her there. Have you told her, Mariam, have you told her that you are a harami? Well, she is. But she is not without qualities, all things considered. You will see for yourself, Laila jan. She is sturdy, for one thing, a good worker, and without pretensions. I’ll say it this way: If she were a car, she would be a Volga.”
- Rasheed comparing his wife Mariam to a car... this really got me head hot.
"Still, she found some comfort in the anonymity that the burqa provided. She wouldn’t be recognized this way if she ran into an old acquaintance of hers. She wouldn’t have to watch the surprise in their eyes, or the pity or the glee, at how far she had fallen, at how her lofty aspirations had been dashed.
- I found it sad that she took solace and comfort in a clothing that was forced on her.
Reading the following - a question popped in my head, they say life isn't fair, right? Then I suppose through that logic not everyone is entitled to happiness and love.
"Mariam had never before been wanted like this. Love had never been declared to her so guilelessly, so unreservedly."
"Mariam saw now the sacrifices a mother made. Decency was but one."
" “Indeed,” he said. “Flamingos.” When the Taliban had found the paintings, Tariq said, they’d taken offense at the birds’ long, bare legs. After they’d tied the cousin’s feet and flogged his soles bloody, they had presented him with a choice: Either destroy the paintings or make the flamingos decent. So the cousin had picked up his brush and painted trousers on every last bird. “And there you have it. Islamic flamingos,” Tariq said."
- This had me laughing, i'm glad there was some comic relief hidden in here. It helped in allowing me to digest all that was said and done.
Spoiler
"No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings."- This part... I didn't even know what to think when I read it. Now that I think about it, I was glad for Mariam, so glad. They took everything away from her in life. All the suffering and pain that she went through, I was glad that she could finally end it all. I was genuinely happy for her.
This book is easy to read, not easy to withstand. Depressing in many areas yes, but brilliant writing! Emotions piled on more emotions throughout. I wouldn't recommend this to a lot of people but If you're looking for a great read regardless of how it makes you feel, then definitely give this a go.
What a great read! It had me on an emotional roller coaster, but every girl needs to read this book to understand the issues with women roles that are still going on today.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes