Reviews

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

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protoman21's review against another edition

5.0

Quite a powerful story. Heartbreaking at times with such small but important moments of triumph mixed in to keep it from being too depressing. The story is very real and flows through Amir's life beautifully without time feeling jerky or leaving you feeling you are only getting part of the story. Hassan has to be one of the most tragic characters I've ever encountered in literature. He is so noble and loyal despite being treated like a second class citizen, and although he changes after he is raped, it is Amir who cannot recover from the incident and ultimately it is Amir's betrayal that hurts the most.

Amir finally finds peace while being beaten to death and is saved by Hassan's son in a gripping scene foreshadowed from early in the novel. It was hard seeing Sohrab treated so poorly, especially considering that it is at the hands of the man who abused his father. Amir redeems himself in a way by rescuing him, but then slips up again and sets the scene for Sohrab's attempted suicide. My heart nearly came to a stop when I realized what Amir would find in the bathroom that night. A powerful scene and one that set up the rest of the novel well. Sohrab's silence put a damper on the happy ending Amir and the reader hoped for, but then the final scene where Amir buys a kite and successfully cuts the string of an aggressive adversary making Sohrab's lips turn up in a half smile left the novel on an uptick and with hope that life will be better.