A review by mrbear
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

3.0

I thought this was quite a bit less engrossing than the Kite Runner. There is a lot going on in this book, but somehow very little actually happens. The constantly switching perspectives (sometimes multiple times in the same page), while not confusing, really underscored the lack of action (it took "moving the camera" to really intrigue the reader). Probably my biggest fault was that the characters were not that believable. I know this is a difficult claim to make - undoubtedly there are many people whose lives and personalities are well described by this book, but in the context of the novel some aspects of how Mariam, Jalil, Rasheed, etc. behaved struck me as oddly out of character - something that did not occur in the Kite Runner.

Overall, worse characterization and a weaker plot than his first novel. There are still things to be learned from this book, but I didn't feel compelled to finish it in the same way.