jrosenstein 's review for:

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

2.0

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I really liked the first half of this book. Shamsie starts with an strong and intriguing protagonist. Hiroko Tanaka is a survivor of the bombing of Nagasaki whose German fiance is killed in the blast. She ends up tracking down his half sister in Delhi right before India becomes independent and Pakistan becomes a country. That should be enough history to pack into one novel, but then Shamsie goes on to include the Soviet occupation of Aghanistan, 9/11, and America's war in Afghanistan. It just gets to be too much, too much history, too much weighty sentiment, too many heavy-handed sentences like "knowing that of all the embraces he had ever received this was the one he least deserved." To me, at least, none of the other characters are as interesting as Hiroko and as the focus shifted away from her I lost interest.