A review by clabepeterson
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

dark emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Oh man. This one hurt. The mark of a good writer is someone who can make you feel something, taking mere words on a page and beaming them up through your eyes to strike at your soul. I felt things a lot during The Kite Runner. Khaled Hosseini is a masterful writer, taking fictional characters and breathing life into them, crafting these anecdotes that feel deeply real–slowly uncovering for us the truth around his characters through how they react and interacts in these stories he is telling. Motifs from these early anecdotes will continue to be woven through the novel as the story progresses, haunting the reader in unexpectedly poignant ways, just as our main character–Amir–is haunted by the the trauma of his own past.

While the central relationships of the novel, between Amir and his father, as well as Amir and Hassan are all but destroyed by the midway point of the book, guilt, pain and regret permeate every page here, as Amir searches for "a way to be good again." Yet, the nuance of this novel comes through how Hosseini addresses the topic of "being good again." This isn't a clear-cut redemption story of Amir repenting for his actions. In a way, he will never repent. As Amir himself reflects on late in the novel, Hassan likely died because of him. Amir took away his father's son, the better half of himself, in an act of selfishness. While a lesser writer would have ended The Kite Runner with Amir returning triumphantly to San Francisco with Hassan's son Sohrab in his arms, Hosseini doesn't let Amir get off easy. Sohrab has the same scars his father has, and no matter how much Amir pushes to heal them, that healing doesn't come from a simple act of repentance. Healing isn't linear. There are small steps forward and small steps back.  It is the realization that "when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time."

While admittedly I haven't read as much as I maybe should, I haven't seen or read a better introspection on trauma than this. Some may say that this book is sad, or even remark that it made them cry. While I did cry, describing it as sad doesn't really sum it up well enough. I left this book with a feeling of despair and emptiness, and that feeling made a much greater statement than mere sadness.

"If someone were to ask me today whether the story of Hassan, Sohrab and me ends with happiness, I wouldn't know what to say. Does anybody's?"

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Sexual assault