Books : A Thousand Splendid Suns

Rating: - Hosseini excels as an emotional plumber...
Having read the 'Kite Runner' I knew this wouldn't be an easy read. The novel sat on my bedside table for over a month before I finally took the plunge, preferring in the meantime easy thrillers and crime novels because, as T.S. Eliot once put it, 'human kind cannot bear very much reality!'

Along with UN missionary status, Hosseini must surely now have obtained a first class degree in emotional plumbing. As predicted, I was drained by 'A Thousand Splendid Suns'. The novel does a suction job on the tear ducts/ heart strings with no release of pressure until the final pages. I won't spoil the ending for anyone but be prepared to live through the emotional worst of the 'Kite Runner' and then some more.

This time, Hosseini's vivid Afghan hell is inflicted on two and a half generations of women, from the late 1960s to the present day. We experience the crushing of human spirit by religious bigotry, the sexual tyranny of male-obsessed feudalism and relentless tribal violence with an endless procession of innocent victims.

After subjecting the reader to three hundred odd pages of this, Hosseini finally produces his emotional rescue package. It's a slightly implausible ending, but the plan is to offer his readers some hope after all the harrowing and trauma.

Overall, the 'Kite Runner' is better constructed and ultimately more uplifting. However, this novel is very powerful and has opened my eyes to the plight of Afghanistan, which was the main purpose of the novel.

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Rating: - Heart Breaking
I have just finished this book and it is the first book that has ever made me shed a tear, and more than once. This book is harsh and very very sad with small but very bright light at the end. I loved this book.

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Rating: - Fantastic book! Great easy readable story with characters you really care to learn more about.
The book sets a story built around the lives of two women; Laila and Mariam and their lives amidst the war torn Afghanistan. At first I thought the war side of the story may act as a deterrent for a long drawn out novel but it provides an interesting an easily readable backdrop to what eventually turns into a novel of love between Laila and Tariq (her one legged childhood friend, Mariam the other wife to their shared husband Rasheed and Afghanistan.

The text starts with the life of Mariam who we find is an illegitimate child with a sad start to life and slowly weaves into the life of Laila a younger more beautiful Afghan woman who goes through different hardships. From the point their two lives interweave and you learn more about the characters, love or hate them you'll find it hard to put down.

You have to read the book to find out how the story ends but it is honestly one of my best reads!! Not too long and draws you in from the first couple of pages.

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Rating: - A disappointment after hearing so much praise for this book
I really found this book a struggle to read. The actual story was ok in theory but the style in which it was written does not really appeal to me. My son reccomended it to me, as he had read "the kite runner" and enjoyed it. It was his copy I read, I'm so glad I didnt buy it myself. I may enjoy "the kite runner" more, I hope so. I got the feeling he was writing a film script rather than a novel, it will probably make a better film than a book. I know I am in a minority but this is my honest review.

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Rating: - A Wonderful Reading Experience!
Having just finished A Thousand Splendid Suns I can now put aside any questions I had about Hosseini being able to write a book that can come close to matching the heartwarming and often heartwrenching reading experience he provided in The Kite Runner. A Thousand Splendid Sun is every bit as good as The Kite Runner -- and in many ways is even better! It is an astonishing, powerful book that had me riveted from the first to the last page, and is broader in scope than The Kite Runner. It is a story of two generations of characters brought together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives -- the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness -- are inextricable from the history playing out around them. A Thousand Splendid Suns is not just a great, although overwhelmingly sad, story, it is history lesson of Afghanistan's last thirty years -- from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding -- that puts the violence, fear, hope and faith of this country in extremely intimate, human terms. Hosseini is a masterful writer whose prose and narrative style ooze emotion. If you have any hesitancy about reading this book, put your doubts aside and rush out to get yourself a copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns. You'll be very glad you did. It is not only a book that will keep you from doing anything else but turning the pages, it is a book that will stay in your head and heart for years to come. It is that good, although that tragic!