Everywhere I go in DC these days, I see people carrying around Khaled Hosseini’s latest novel: A Thousand Splendid Suns. Washingtonians are reading it everywhere: the train, the park, the bus, you name it. According to the Washington Post’s "Book World" section, the hardcover edition of the book is the top seller in the Washington DC Metro area. It is really quite fascinating for me to see a bestseller at work.
I, too, am among those Washingtonians carrying around this novel. Like everyone else, I’m reading it while commuting back and forth to work. I’m nearly done with it and so far I’m unimpressed. It’s a real disappointment for me, as I was so enchanted by The Kite Runner that I could not wait to put my hands on Husseini’s next work.
But this novel doesn’t really present anything new. It is filled with clichés and it’s quite obvious that Hosseini had Western audiences in mind when he wrote it. I felt he was writing to please an audience and not merely to exorcise his deep-rooted feelings. I was also disappointed with the prose. It felt so dull and it dragged until eternity. I also felt he had trouble portraying the female point-of-view. His Kite Runner protagonist, Amir, was so well-developed and complex. That is not the case with the two protagonists here: Mariam and Laila. Too bad!
But then again, this is only humble opinion. I’m sure there are many out there that will disagree.
I just finished reading the book Natasha and I couldn’t agree more with every point you made.
Simply put: it lacked authenticity. I believed kite runner, whereas this book seemed too formalic.
I just finished reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, and found it to be one of the most moving, gripping novels I’ve ever read. Once into the story after the first 50 pages or so, I couldn’t put it down. The main characters’ private thoughts of anguish, sadness and love were expressed with such a poetic and magical quality – a stark contradiction to this backdrop of destruction and injustice, and therefore all the more powerful. His female and male characters were very real and strong. Hosseini is a wonderfully gifted author, and I cannot wait to read The Kite Runner and other subsequent works.
A Thousand Splendid Suns is an amazing book, strangely Im reading this one before The Kite Runner which I hear is even more splendid, so Im just dying to get my hands on The Kite Runner. I cried like anything while reading A Thousand Splendid Suns and I wish there was a way I could convey my appreciation to the author, what a emotional story, tremendous, heart wrecking. Im almost at the end and I just cant put it down! Youre a great writer Mr. Hosseini~! Welldone!
i absolutely loved this book…yes it was gripping and i didnt want to put it down. i liked this one a little bit more then i did Kite Runner..lol does he have another book coming out?