Amazon.com
It's difficult to imagine a harder first act to follow than The Kite Runner: a debut novel by an unknown writer about a country many readers knew little about that has gone on to have over four million copies in print worldwide. But when preview copies of Khaled Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, started circulating at Amazon.com, readers reacted with a unanimous enthusiasm that few of us could remember seeing before. As special as The Kite Runner was, those readers said, A Thousand Splendid Suns is more so, bringing Hosseini's compassionate storytelling and his sense of personal and national tragedy to a tale of two women that is weighted equally with despair and grave hope.
We wanted to spread the word on the book as widely, and as soon, as we could. See below for an exclusive excerpt from A Thousand Splendid Suns and early reviews of the book from some of our top customer reviewers.--The Editors
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An Exclusive Excerpt from A Thousand Splendid Suns |
We have arranged with the publisher to make an exclusive excerpt of A Thousand Splendid Suns available on Amazon.com. Click here to read a scene from the novel. It's not the opening scene, but rather one from a crucial moment later in the book when Mariam, one of the novel's two main characters, steps into a new role.
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Early Buzz from Amazon.com Top Reviewers |
We queried our top 100 customer reviewers as of March 6, 2007, and asked them to read A Thousand Splendid Suns and share their thoughts. We've included these early reviews below in the order they were received. For the sake of space, we've only included a brief excerpt of each reviewer's response, but each review is available for reading in its entirety by clicking the "Read the review" link.
Joanna Daneman:
"His style is deceptively simple and clear, the characters drawn deftly and swiftly, his themes elemental and huge. This is a brilliant writer and I look forward to more of his work." Read Joanna Daneman's review
Seth J. Frantzman:
"Khaled Hosseini has done it again with 'A Thousand Splendid Sons', presenting a new, dashing and dark tale of two generations of women trapped in a loveless marriage, bracketed by great events." Read Seth J. Frantzman's review
Donald Mitchell:
"Khaled Hosseini has succeeded in capturing many important historical and contemporary themes in a way that will make your heart ache again and again. Why will your reaction be so strong? It's because you'll identify closely with the suffering of almost all the characters, a reaction that's very rare to a modern novel." Read Donald Mitchell's review
Lawrance M. Bernabo:
"All things considered, following up on a successful first novel is probably harder than coming up with the original effort and Hosseini could have rested on his laurels in the manner of Harper Lee, but as "A Thousand Splendid Suns" amply proves, this native of Kabul has more stories to tell about the land of Afghanistan." Read Lawrance M. Bernabo's review
Amanda Richards:
"There are parts of this book that will have grown men surreptitiously blotting the tears that are on the verge of overflowing their ducts, and by the time you get to the middle, you won't be able to put it down. Hosseini's simple but richly descriptive prose makes for an engrossing read, and in my opinion, "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is among the best I have ever read. This is definitely not one to be missed." Read Amanda Richards's review
N. Durham:
"All that being said, "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is a bit more enjoyable than Hosseini's previous "The Kite Runner", and once again he manages to give we readers another glimpse of a world that we know little about but frequently condemn and discard. However, if you were one of the many that for some reason absolutely loved "The Kite Runner", chances are that you'll love this as well." Read N. Durham's review
John Kwok:
"Khaled Hosseini's "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is a genuine instant literary classic, and one destined to be remembered as one of 2007's best novels. It should be compared favorably to such legendary Russian novels like "War and Peace" and "Doctor Zhivago"." Read John Kwok's review
Thomas Duff:
"Normally I'm more of an action-adventure type reader when it comes to novels and recreational reading. But I was given the chance to read A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (author of The Kite Runner), so I decided to try something out of my normal genre. I am *so* glad I did. This is a stunning and moving novel of life and love in Afghanistan over a 30 year period." Read Thomas Duff's review
Charles Ashbacher:
"This book manages to simultaneously capture the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years and how women are treated in conservative Islamic societies.... In many ways it is a sad book, your heart goes out to these two women in their hopeless struggle to have a decent life with a brutal man in an unforgiving, intolerant society." Read Charles Ashbacher's review
W. Boudville:
"Hosseini presents a piognant view into the recent tortured decades of the Afghan experience. From the 1970s, under a king, to the Soviet takeover, to the years of resistance. And then the rise and fall of the Taliban. An American reader will recognise many of the main political events. But to many Americans, Afghanistan and its peoples and religion remain an opaque and troubling mystery." Read W. Boudville's review
Mark Baker:
"I tend to read plot heavy books, so this character study was a definite change of pace for me. I found the first half slow going at times, mainly because I knew where the story was going. Once I got into the second half, things really picked up. The ending was very bittersweet. I couldn't think of a better way to end it." Read Mark Baker's review
Grady Harp:
"Hosseini takes us behind those walls for forty some years of Afghanistan's bloody history and while he does not spare us any of the descriptions of the terror that continues to besiege that country, he does offer us a story that speaks so tenderly about the fragile beauty of love and devotion and lasting impression people make on people." Read Grady Harp's review
Robert P. Beveridge:
"When I was actively reading it, the pages kept turning, and more than once I found myself foregoing food or sleep temporarily to get in just one more chapter. When I had put it down, however, I felt no particular compulsion to pick it back up again. It's a good book, and a relatively well-written one, but it's not a great book. Enjoyable without leaving a lasting impression." Read Robert P. Beveridge's review
B. Marold:
"While the events in Afghanistan and the wider world create a familiar framework for the stories of these two women, it is nothing more than a framework. The warp and weft of everyday life, and the interaction of the two women and their close relatives is the heartbeat of the story." Read B. Marold's review
Daniel Jolley:
"Khaled Hosseini has written a majestic, sweeping, emotionally powerful story that provides the reader with a most telling window into Afghan society over the past thirty-odd years. It's also a moving story of friendship and sacrifice, giving Western readers a rare glimpse into the suffering and mistreatment of Afghan women that began long before the Taliban came to power." Read Daniel Jolley's review
Book Description
After 103 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and with four million copies of The Kite Runner shipped, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today.
Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love.
Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.
A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.
Customer Reviews:
A Thousand Splendid Suns.......2007-10-10
This book was excellent; even better than The Kite Runner. What an eye opener to the series of horrific acts that befall women in the middle east.
A vibrant, intense, and emotionally wrenching book.......2007-10-09
"A Thousand Splendid Suns" is a gripping novel that left me with a profound respect for women who struggle and flourish under restrictive regimes and repressive religions. I could almost feel the pain, fear, anger, frustration, hope and courage these women endure each and every day. The author faithfully delivers an emotionally taut epic that will strike a chord with many. I hated and loved this story all at the same time.
Tragic Journey of Love.......2007-10-08
A Thousand Splendid Suns is an absolutely wonderful story about the things that keep us going, even when our world falls apart. You will find yourself pulled into this tragic story, unable to put the book down. This book will touch your heart on a very real level. I can't wait to read it again.
terrific book, but left with some mixed feelings.......2007-10-08
I just finished this audiobook in a straight 10-hour period while I listened to my iPod as I refinished my deck. This book certainly does not leave your emotions untouched and most certainly gets you involved intimately with the characters that Hosseini develops. It is difficult at this point to catalog the full range of emotions that I felt while reading this book. Righteous indignation may be the main emotion I can recall from most of the pages. How much I, as a man, wanted to swoop in and solve away all of their problems with my western life of abundance. On examining this particular desire, perhaps the true message of this book comes out. It is written completely and totally in a worldview that is very different from us Western readers. The themes of survival, fate, endurance, are not ones that come to the fore in our minds. Concepts so important to us in this part of the world such as ambition, achievement, and discovery of dreams keep a place in the forefront of our minds.
This is particularly pointed in my mind, since I had just visited DisneyWorld days before reading this book. Their theme is that every girl wants to be a princess and at one point they had the audience chant that "Dreams come true" and remarked how every boy wants to be a pirate and every girl a princess. The interesting thing is what our dreams are. They are not the dream shared by the characters in the novel of independence, a motherhood, and freedom from fear. This disney dream is the idea that we will be exalted above our peers, that our extreme abundance will be greater than the extreme abundance of those around us. That our difference, our individuality will give us significance, only possible at the expense of others.
This is perhaps why the novel hit me as such an unfamiliar, foreign thing. I was depressed by how everything seemed to go bad for the characters on how there was not a hero -- not a constant juxtaposition of good and bad, of hope and disappointment, that is such a similar genre or phrase used in our modern stories. Eventually as the story waged on, it seemed that surely the scars created in the characters must be too deep, too unrecoverable for there to be a happy, Disney style ending. So at some point in reading this book I became very frustrated with the seeming desolateness of the emotional landscape, the lack of a knight in shining armor that I wanted to project myself in to the story.
In the end, however, I found that redemption was there. When Lila thought of Miriam as a young girl and I thought of the hopes and dreams of a young girl and how tragically shattered they were, this touched deep inside me and created a desire to be a father who nurtured and protected the sanctity of his child's dreams. Not dreams to be a princess, but dreams to be a mother themselves dreams to be free from fear and dreams to hope and a future. I closed the book resolute to make these dreams a reality for all daughters.
Strong but disturbing.......2007-10-07
After The Kite Runner, I looked forward to Hosseini's next book. From a literary standpoint, A Thousand Splendid Suns certainly did not disappoint. He weaved personal stories into the social and historic framework of Afghanistan, and the result was wonderful. This is a very sad book, though. Also, while the character of Mariam was strong and endearing, I couldn't feel quite as strongly about Laila.
Amazon.com
Best known for the provocative and powerful novel, Midwives (an Oprah Book Club® Selection), Chris Bohjalian writes beautiful and riveting fiction featuring what the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed "ordinary people in heartbreaking circumstances behaving with grace and dignity." In his new novel, The Double Bind, a literary thriller with references to (and including characters from) The Great Gatsby, Bohjalian takes readers on a haunting journey through one woman's obsession with uncovering a dark secret. We think Bohjalian fans will be thrilled with this compelling and unforgettable read, but just to be sure, we asked bestselling author Jodi Picoult to read The Double Bind and give us her take. Check out her review below. --Daphne Durham
Guest Reviewer: Jodi Picoult
From the provocative and gut-wrenching The Pact, to the brilliant genre-bending The Tenth Circle, to her latest novel about a high school shooting Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult's riveting novels center on family and relationships, and bring to light questions and issues that remain with a reader long after the last page is turned.
I once heard a fellow novelist call writing "successful schizophrenia"--we invent people and worlds that don't exist; but instead of being medicated, we are paid for it. Although countless novels succeed in whisking the reader away on the heels of such fabrications, there are very few that pull the curtain away from the craft, allowing us inside the mind of a working novelist as he combines reality and fantasy. Chris Bohjalian's The Double Bind is not just one of these; it's the finest example I've ever read of a book that tips its hat to both the beauty of the literary creation, as well as the magical act of creating.
Fact and fiction become indistinguishable in The Double Bind: The story centers on Laurel Estabrook, a young social worker and survivor of a near-rape, who stumbles across photographs taken by a formerly homeless client and tries to understand how a man who'd taken snapshots of celebrities in the 50s and 60s might have wound up on the streets. However, an author's note tells us that Bohjalian conceived this book after being shown a batch of old photographs taken by a once-homeless man; and the actual photos of Bob "Soupy" Campbell are peppered throughout the text. In another neat twist, Bohjalian's resurrects details from The Great Gatsby, which become "real" in the context of his own novel--Laurel lives in West Egg; part of her hunt for her photographer's past involves meeting with the descendants of Daisy and Tom Buchanan.
As a writer who counts The Great Gatsby as one of the books that changed her life, this inclusion was both startling and remarkable for me. Who doesn't want one's favorite characters to come to life--even if it's only within the constraints of another fictional work? But Bohjalian chose his text wisely: no discussion of The Great Gatsby is complete without alluding to missed opportunities and unreliable sources--critical elements in Laurel's quest. And therein lies Bohjalian's true double bind: all stories--even the ones we tell ourselves--are subject to our own interpretation, and to the degree we can make others believe them.
The Double Bind may flirt with the classics, but it's not your father's stuffy old tome: it's the sort of book you want to read in one sitting, and it packs a twist at the end that will leave you speechless. It also, worthily, spotlights the cause of homelessness in a way that isn't preachy, but honest and explanatory. Ultimately, what Bohjalian's done is offer his lucky readers another reminder of why he's such an extraordinary author: by creating characters that become so real we lose the distinction between truth and embellishment; by reminding us that the story of any life--whether fictional, functional, or marginal--is one to be savored. --Jodi Picoult
Book Description
Throughout his career, Chris Bohjalian has earned a reputation for writing novels that examine some of the most important issues of our time. With
Midwives, he explored the literal and metaphoric place of birth in our culture. In
The Buffalo Soldier, he introduced us to one of contemporary literature’s most beloved foster children. And in
Before You Know Kindness, he plumbed animal rights, gun control, and what it means to be a parent.
Chris Bohjalian’s riveting fiction keeps us awake deep into the night. As The New York Times has said, “Few writers can manipulate a plot with Bohjalian’s grace and power.” Now he is back with an ambitious new novel that travels between Jay Gatsby’s Long Island and rural New England, between the Roaring Twenties and the twenty-first century.
When college sophomore Laurel Estabrook is attacked while riding her bicycle through Vermont’s back roads, her life is forever changed. Formerly outgoing, Laurel withdraws into her photography and begins to work at a homeless shelter. There she meets Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of photographs that he won’t let anyone see. When Bobbie dies suddenly, Laurel discovers that he was telling the truth: before he was homeless, Bobbie Crocker was a successful photographer who had indeed worked with such legends as Chuck Berry, Robert Frost, and Eartha Kitt.
As Laurel’s fascination with Bobbie’s former life begins to merge into obsession, she becomes convinced that some of his photographs reveal a deeply hidden, dark family secret. Her search for the truth will lead her further from her old life—and into a cat-and-mouse game with pursuers who claim they want to save her.
In this spellbinding literary thriller, rich with complex and compelling characters—including Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan—Chris Bohjalian takes readers on his most intriguing, most haunting, and most unforgettable journey yet.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent as usual.......2007-10-05
I love reading his books. i am in the world he creates. Each book is a new experience. He is definitely not a formula author. Our book club selected another of his books for discussion. We enjoyed it and the discussion. We want to invite him to conference call with us.
Long and winding middle of the road writing.......2007-09-29
Author Chris Plot Twist Bohjalian is at it again. As with his breakout novel, Midwives, The Double Bind is filled with twists and turns and things are never what they seem. Due to that fact, little that can be said without spoiling the plot. A young woman who has survived a harrowing ordeal lands a job at a homeless shelter. After being given a box of photographs belonging to a recently deceased client of the place, she tries to find out as much as possible about the man and his family. Although her coworkers, friends and acquaintances believe that she is going overboard in her quest, she is undeterred and doggedly pursues the truth. In a number of places, the reader will likely find him or herself wondering about certain coincidences and unlikelihoods, but if he or she is can just go with it - things will eventually become clear. Clever plotting aside, the book has its problems: it is long, long, long and the writing is not exactly compelling; there are two sections (within the prologue and again in the Chapter 28) that contain profanity and graphically described violence; except for some discussion of the fact that the homeless often suffer from mental illness and Laurel's encounter with a homeless man (during which she throws caution to the wind, telling her companions that she will escort the strange man to the shelter ALONE), the whole "homeless" angle of the story seems pretty sanitized; and anyone unfamiliar with The Great Gatsby is sure to have a tough time of it. The story's highlights can be found by reading the following (if you plan to read it in its entirety, don't read on): the prologue, page 200 (for "the double bind" explained), and chapter twenty-eight through the reader's guide. Best thing about the book - the surprises - worst - the writing. Midwives is a better choice.
WOW........2007-09-27
I am rarely as enthralled with a book as I was this one...couldn't put it down, and I will recommend it to many people! Very different, brilliantly creative, and breathtaking. READ IT.
A Painful Reality.......2007-09-17
No matter how lurid, misunderstood, violent or repugnant the subject, Chris Bohjalian wrests his themes from the daily news, fleshes them out with realistic details and spins a compelling tale that both enchants
and educates the reader. His latest book, The Double Bind, deals with the aftermath of a brutally senseless attack on a compassionate young social worker.
The author aced this one, and I will never again see a young woman pass by on a bicycle without reliving in my mind the horror of a cruel encounter on a bright fall day along a Vermont country lane. The event and the subsequent unfolding of the residual pain are told with
compassion and a surreal weave of reality and fantasy. It's hard to imagine where this talented writer will take us next!
Izzie Hayes, avid Bohjalian fan
A literary game not played by fair rules.......2007-09-17
I have to give Mr. Bohjalian 5 stars for chutzpah. How many authors would so tightly link their own work to one of the American classics of the 20th century--perhaps the Great American Novel itself--forcing any reader to compare Bohjalian to Fitzgerald? I can assure you that, if this work is representative, Mr. Bohjalian is no Fitzgerald; they hardly speak the same language.
But wait, the chutzpah gets even more extreme! It is possible that Mr. Bohjalian has deliberately given us this rambling, slack style--sometimes seemingly deliberately hanging with Spanish-moss-like clumps of unfocused, clicheed phrases that only a nonwriter would dare have appear under his own name--for a literary purpose. Without revealing too much--and the book is all about the series of relevations that progressively emerge--I think I can safely suggest that Mr. Bohjalian may be dropping a (perhaps massive) clue about where the story is heading by writing in such a slack, nonliterary style. Chutzpah indeed to set himself up so close to a master stylist like Fitzgerald just to make himself look like a bad writer to advance his own plot.
Or maybe not. Maybe the book really isn't that coherent. It teems with references to The Great Gatsby on many levels. It invites the reader to hear these references in multiple voices speaking in the primary narrator's voice. But for the life of me, I can't distinguish where one voice starts and another leaves off. Shifts appear to occur in the middle of paragraphs. Or at least, the story can be viewed as coherent only if this is going on. As a reader, I feel like one of the early German scholars of the Bible trying to sort through the distinct voices present in the text and wondering what scribe could have edited these voices together in such a haphazard patchwork. What was the scribe trying to do?! What is the author trying to do here?
I can't be more detailed without revealing key elements of the story. Let me say simply this. I came to the book with great expectations. I actually lived in F. Scott Fitzgerald's dorm room in college and had a classmate who saw himself and his girlfriend as the reincarnations of F. Scott and Zelda. (Sounds like part of some alternative take off on Gatsby, but this one wasn't fiction ;-)). I felt a literary mystery story unfolding through the pages of The Double Bind and my expectations rose. I love a good literary game. But as the revelations unfolded, I couldn't make them hold together. Other readers I have spoken to have had the same reaction. At the end of the day, I can't tell what the author actually intended us to believe happened in his story. More than anything, I felt as though he had not played fairly by any set of rules he had set for the game. Or maybe more mercifully, the game didn't have coherent rules to begin with. Takes Mr. Bohjalian off the hook, but it takes any fun out of the game. I came away frustrated and disappointed.
Amazon.com
Settle down to enjoy a rousing good ghost story with Diane Setterfield's debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale. Setterfield has rejuvenated the genre with this closely plotted, clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths. She never cheats by pulling a rabbit out of a hat; this atmospheric story hangs together perfectly.
There are two heroines here: Vida Winter, a famous author, whose life story is coming to an end, and Margaret Lea, a young, unworldly, bookish girl who is a bookseller in her father's shop. Vida has been confounding her biographers and fans for years by giving everybody a different version of her life, each time swearing it's the truth. Because of a biography that Margaret has written about brothers, Vida chooses Margaret to tell her story, all of it, for the first time. At their initial meeting, the conversation begins:
"You have given nineteen different versions of your life story to journalists in the last two years alone."
She [Vida] shrugged. "It's my profession. I'm a storyteller."
"I am a biographer, I work with facts."
The game is afoot and Margaret must spend some time sorting out whether or not Vida is actually ready to tell the whole truth. There is more here of Margaret discovering than of Vida cooperating wholeheartedly, but that is part of Vida's plan.
Margaret has a story of her own: she was one of conjoined twins and her sister died so that Margaret could live. She feels an otherworldly aura sometimes or a yearning for a part of her that is forever missing. Vida's story involves two wild girls--feral twins (is she one of them?)--who would have been better off being suckled by wolves. Instead, their mother and uncle, involved in things too unsavory to contemplate, combine to neglect them woefully. There's also a governess, a Doctor, a kindly housekeeper, a gardener, and another presence--a very strange presence--which Margaret perceives as a ghost at first. Making obeisance to other great ghost stories, there is a deadly fire, a beautiful old house gone to ruin, and always that presence....
The transformative power of truth informs the lives of both women by story's end, and The Thirteenth Tale is finally and convincingly told. --Valerie Ryan
Book Description
When Margaret Lea opened the door to the past, what she confronted was her destiny.
All children mythologize their birth...So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's collection of stories, which are as famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale as they are for the delight and enchantment of the twelve that do exist.
The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself -- all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission.
As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire.
Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.
The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.
Customer Reviews:
Don't Take This Book to Bed With You!.......2007-10-09
It starts out well. Our heroine, Margaret, is the daughter of a dealer in old and rare books, the kind that can support the family on a handful of special sales per year. She has worked with her quietly doting father from earliest childhood, learning to love both their trade and the many books upon their shelves. Then, on a day like any other, she receives a summons from the most published, and yet personally unknown, author in England. Vida Winters, known for telling a new and different scenario to reporters whenever asked about her past, has decided to finally tell the true story of her life to someone, and she has chosen Margaret.
Leaving the shop, her agoraphobic and distant mother, and her beloved books, Margaret takes with her a ream of paper, twelve shiny red pencils, and the discovered secret that her parents think is safely sealed away in a tin under the bed.
Miss Winters' story, she says, must be told in its proper order, without interruption by questions, with no looking ahead. And she must tell it before the wolf, eating her from the inside, finishes her storytelling forever. Margaret's plan to decline the job suddenly is overwhelmed by the hints of love, loss, tragedy, and deranged secrets.
The daily sessions of story-telling begin with the loss of a mother, the depression of a father, and the rearing of the product of their union. And then the story begins to darken.
Ms. Setterfield creates, with a masterful use of vocabulary and phrasing, a virtual "train wreck" of events. As the reader watches the engine approach, an inner sense of disaster perceives that the trestle ahead is weak. One by one the cars of the train follow along, swaying and groaning with the stress, starting to tumble into the abyss. Surely the train will stop and the last few cars, at least, will remain in safety. Surely the disaster cannot become worse....
Raised in a house with a reclusive uncle, a housekeeper with dementia, and a taciturn gardener, young Vida suddenly finds herself in charge of the comings and goings of all the residents of the lonely estate, responsible for their needs and for keeping anyone living in the village from intruding on their lair lest they find out their gruesome secrets.
When it seems impossible for any good ending (happy is perhaps too strong a word here), Ms. Setterfield snatches real life away from the horrors of the fire and the insanity, and carefully wraps up all the stories in a satisfactory manner. Whew!
A good, and compelling, read, The Thirteenth Tale will hold your attention and require you to continue to the very end.
Just don't take this book to bed with you.
Too many crazy people in the attic... (contains spoliers).......2007-10-05
The Thirteenth tale is a nice pseudo-gothic novel, inspired by classic English Victorian novels. It has all the mandatory characters and events, and in abundance. In place of one crazy wife in the attic, Ms. Setterfiled generously provides us with several generations of a mad family. There are abandoned children, mixed up twins, a fire and a ghost. The plot is quite engaging though hard to believe. The characters are poorly developed one-dimensional figures; the flow of events is just superficially glued together, leaving loose ends and blank gaps here and there.
The story of Vida Winter was rather a disappointment, after the first dozen of pages that had promised some dark story about a bookish girl in the world of old dusty books, diaries of dead people and forgotten pages. I wish I read about this one. Then I wouldn't have had all these silly questions that kept me from enjoying the book: why everybody would go nuts about the childhood of a popular writer, meaning the events that happened before she even started to write? How come a child lives in a family (though a nuts family but anyway) and doesn't have a name? Why did Vida's mother abandon her? Why did Vida love retarded Emmeline so much, that chose her over the boy she liked? If Emmeline and Adeline were so different, why was it impossible to tell one from another? Why was it such a bad idea to separate the twins?...
Several Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.......2007-10-02
This book is overrated. The best thing about it, several references to fairy tales, ended an eighth of the way in: (p 34) "a single lupine exhalation could reduce it to rubble;" (p 40) "[the bed] was so lavishly covered with cushions that there could be any number of peas under the mattress and I would not know it...;" (p 47) "I have cried wolf too often." After an interminably long time, when the contents of the Thirteenth Tale was finally revealed, all I could do was resent the fact that Vida Winter insisted on telling the story in such a painstakingly slow manner (p 52) "beginning at the beginning, continuing with the middle, and with the end at the end. Everything in its proper place. No cheating. No looking ahead. No questions." The result being that readers were forced to trudge through the hundreds of pages of nonsense that made up the story of her unlikely life (which appears to include a major theme from the novel Middlesex and several characters who would have fit right in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest). The who's who of the family members was a boring lesson in inequalities, and the mental states of several characters only served to confirm why familial relationships are not generally allowed to stray into the forbidden zone. Far from the end, I was tired of learning the details about the reclusive writer's ultra-dysfunctional family members and their pitiable but uninterestingly messed up lives. Better: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Jane Eyre, The Woman in White, The Turn of the Screw, The Wings of the Dove, etc.
Storytelling At It's Best!.......2007-09-29
I've read so many wonderful books by first time novelists this year, and The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield will certainly join the ranks of Audrey Niffenegger and Elizabeth Kostova. This is another one of those unread treasures that has been sitting on my shelf and it makes me wonder what other visionary treats lie there in waiting.
The Thirteenth Tale is a prime example of storytelling at it's top form. Margaret Lea is a young woman who works at her father's bookshop which specializes in rare and antiquarian books. She's been surrounded by books throughout her life and has grown comfortable with the classics such as Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, The Woman in White, etc. and has shied away from more contemporary literature. That is, until she is summonsed by Vida Winter, a top selling novelist with a mysterious past who has requested that Margaret record the story of her life. Margaret is a bit leary of the commission, but accepts and finds that she must face her own ghosts while recording the ghosts of Ms. Winter's past - a past that reveals that the truth is often stranger than fiction.
There are so many things that I loved about this book. The characters are wonderful. Vida Winter is someone that I wish truly existed just so that I could sit in her library in front of her fireplace and listen to her tell me her stories. But of course, the wonderful Diane Setterfield, who wrote Vida Winter's character does exist ;) The storytelling aspect of this novel was just perfect. There wasn't a single moment in the novel when I was bored. There's constantly a hook to grab you and the story is always appealing.
I haven't read Daniel Wallace's book, Big Fish, but much of this novel reminded of a gothic version of the film. It's a tale of a past that's truly bizarre, yet grounded in fact. This novel could easily be translated to the big screen and make a beautiful film by the way. Setterfield paints a very vivid picture in her descriptions of the landscapes, her characters appearances, the libraries, etc.
I'm so glad that I've finally joined the other half of the world that's read this book! I've been saying this a lot lately, but here's another author that I really look forward to following throughout her career. Setterfield certainly has a promising future ahead of her if she continues to turn out novels that deliver as well as this one did.
Loved It !.......2007-09-28
: ) ***** Dark, gothic, absorbing. I just couldn't put the book down. ***** : )
Book Description
“There are places that I have never forgotten. A little cobbled street in a smoky mill town in the North of England has haunted me for the greater part of my life. It was inevitable that I should write about it and the people who lived on both sides of its ‘Invisible Wall.’ ”
The narrow street where Harry Bernstein grew up, in a small English mill town, was seemingly unremarkable. It was identical to countless other streets in countless other working-class neighborhoods of the early 1900s, except for the “invisible wall” that ran down its center, dividing Jewish families on one side from Christian families on the other. Only a few feet of cobblestones separated Jews from Gentiles, but socially, it they were miles apart.
On the eve of World War I, Harry’s family struggles to make ends meet. His father earns little money at the Jewish tailoring shop and brings home even less, preferring to spend his wages drinking and gambling. Harry’s mother, devoted to her children and fiercely resilient, survives on her dreams: new shoes that might secure Harry’s admission to a fancy school; that her daughter might marry the local rabbi; that the entire family might one day be whisked off to the paradise of America.
Then Harry’s older sister, Lily, does the unthinkable: She falls in love with Arthur, a Christian boy from across the street.
When Harry unwittingly discovers their secret affair, he must choose between the morals he’s been taught all his life, his loyalty to his selfless mother, and what he knows to be true in his own heart.
A wonderfully charming memoir written when the author was ninety-three, The Invisible Wall vibrantly brings to life an all-but-forgotten time and place. It is a moving tale of working-class life, and of the boundaries that can be overcome by love.
Customer Reviews:
A captivating story of a harsh life.......2007-09-03
This book is full of the details of a life that many of us will never experience. The authors story of extreme poverty living in a large family with a hardworking but struggling mother and a distant and often abusive father is both horrifying and captivating.
While it sounds like this should be a depressing book, the details of the moments of hope and happiness lifts it out of the dark side of life in Lancashire and made me wonder about the future for the various key characters. The book is set before and after the great War, but it could be timeless. The central location is a street of two rows of houses facing each other with the 'jews' on one side and the 'christians' on the other. For most of the book there is almost no mingling between the two sides. But at times when their lives are most difficult, they do get together to support one another.
I don't want to give away the story line too much. Some of the difficult scenes are extremely hard to endure, but the details really light up this book even things are hardest.
I would not recommend for anyone younger than about 13, there are too many difficult details here. But for the rest of us, there's LOTS to learn about the silly things that divide us and the fact that despite religious difficulties our lives are more similar than we'd like to believe.
Poignant and profound.......2007-06-26
An absolutely wonderful book written by a 93 year old author who captures the very essence of anti-semitism in pre-World War I England through his own childhood experiences. The last chapter is so descriptive and poignant...really tugs at the heartstrings. I hope Mr. Bernstein continues to share his gift of the written word.
Excellent book.......2007-05-28
Wonderfully written. This book surprised me because of its unpredictability. I couldn't put it down. Mr. Bernstein's story is beautiful, it's a wonder why he waited so long to share it.
A read to get you thinking.......2007-05-25
My six member book club read this last month, and all of us, including our most critical member, found this book very enjoyable and enlightening. The inclusion of dialog easily puts the reader in the time period. The tone and style of the author encourage empathy and understanding of both populations on either side of the invisible wall. The author conveys his and his sibling's emotions in the gentlest of ways while the reader easily grasps that at the time they were much more. While not quite a page turner, my attention never lagged and I would have willingly read more. I would have appreciated more wisdom on the overall subject such as was found in Arthur's letter to Lily.
Vivid Memoir.......2007-05-25
Harry Bernstein writes in a descriptive manner that makes all the characters seem to be living right in front of the reader's eyes. The story is so interesting that I could not put the book down until I finished. It was hard to believe that a man at ninety years of age could remember so much detail and emotion back to his early childhood. The book was well worth reading. I look forward to Mr. Bernstein's next book.
Book Description
This wickedly funny, big-hearted novel about life in the office signals the arrival of a gloriously talented new writer. The characters in Then We Came to the End cope with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, secret romance, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. By day they compete for the best office furniture left behind and try to make sense of the mysterious pro-bono ad campaign that is their only remaining "work."
Customer Reviews:
Great read -- offers some surprises........2007-10-01
As already mentioned in several reviews, this book is not as hilarious as some critics made it out to be. However, this is still a very entertaining and witty novel. I loved the end.
Must-read for anyone who has ever worked at an ad agency!.......2007-09-27
If you've ever worked at an agency, you'll recognize each character as one of your coworkers (or you!). And you'll feel sick alongside them as layoffs continue and pro bono jobs replace paying clients. It's hard to keep track of all the characters at first, but the author helps out by reminding you who's who throughout ... plus there are fewer and fewer as the story progresses. I highly recommend this book!
Don't Waste Your Time..........2007-09-11
This was probably the worst and most boring book I've read in 2007. Amazon has it rated as one of "the best so far..." There must be some mistake. The author, while allegedly a skilled writer, drones on and on about the most irrelevant subjects, 5 pages devoted to a chair. It has taken me almost a whole month to finish because I get sleepy after about 3 pages and have to put it down. I am now on the last chapter and can't wait to "come to the end". The characters are mere caricatures of real people with no depth or relatability. There is basically no plot to speak of. I have given it two stars because the author has an occasional good line or train of thought, but when he puts them all together it's nothing but a trainwreck. I'm no rocket scientist and usually pretty easily entertained but this book was no good. I'm serious.
office culture.......2007-09-11
if you work in an office with lots of personalities, this book should resonate. Mr. Ferris had to have intimate knowledge of a cubbied space
Hilarious.......2007-09-06
Hard not to get a kick out of this book. He makes connections in culture today that will blow your mind. Great read.
Book Description
For decades indispensable, the AMA Manual of Style continues to provide editorial support to the medical and scientific publishing community. Since the 1998 publication of the 9th edition, however, the world of medical publishing has rapidly modernized, and the intersection of research and publishing has become ever more complex. The 10th edition of the AMA Manual of Style, published in early 2007, brings this definitive manual into the 21st century with a broadened international perspective. In doing so, the 10th edition has expanded its electronic guidelines, with the understanding that authors now routinely submit articles through online systems and often cite Web-only content. Ethical and legal issues receive increased attention, with detailed guidelines on authorship, conflicts of interest, scientific misconduct, intellectual property, and the protection of individuals' rights in scientific research and publication. The new edition examines research ethics and editorial independence and features new material on indexing and searching as well as medical nomenclature. JAMA and the Archives Journals, one of the most groups of medical publications in the world, have lent members of their expert staff of professional journal editors to the committee that has produced this edition. Extensively peer-reviewed, the 10th edition provides a welcome and improved standard for the growing international medical community. More than a style manual, this 10th edition offers invaluable guidance on how to navigate the dilemmas that authors and researchers and their institutions, medical editors and publishers, and members of the news media who cover scientific research confront in a society that has thrust these issues center stage.
Customer Reviews:
Worth the Wait.......2007-05-09
I've been waiting for this book since becoming a medical editor 3 years ago. It is completely updated for modern-day medical communications and now includes extensive sections with Internet-related information. I use it nearly every day and absolutely love it.
At long last, the go-to guide for medical writers and editors is revised.......2007-04-17
At long last, the 10th Edition of the AMA Manual of Style is finally available, and I am happy to say it was worth the wait. As an editor who has worked in medical journals, scientific Web sites, and an agency specializing in pharmaceutical advertising, I found the 9th edition to be, at times, a bit dated and not as easy to navigate as I would have hoped. Most of those problems have been resolved in the 10th edition, as well as the inclusion of some new information that I didn't even know I was missing until I found.
The following is a list of changes in the new edition of the style guide that I found particularly helpful and relevant, and will hopefully be a quick go-to guide when you're debating whether to buy the new version or hold fast to the 9th edition.
- The section on Correct and Preferred Usage has moved from Chapter 9 to Chapter 11 and includes a wealth of information that was not in the previous edition. There is more information about the difference between race and ethnicity and when it's relevant to include sexual orientation in a scientific manuscript.
- An extended section on electronic references (3.15, 63-72). This new info is highly relevant considering since 1998 (when the 9th edition was released) there have been a number of innovations with the Internet and a number of authors choose to use the Web as sources of information.
- The section on manuscript preparation is vastly improved and expanded (Ch 4). It includes more information on the different types of tables and figures as well as new guidelines for the use of symbols and footnotes.
- Of particular interest to journal editors, there is more information on authorship requirements, conflicts of interest, sources of funding, and copyright and permissions basics (Ch 5).
- The section on capitalization demonstrates that, not only can the AMA editors laugh at themselves, but that they're also familiar with the lyrics of Coolio (eg, There is no party like a West Coast party because a West Coast party doesn't stop. 10.3, 375). The section on capitalization also includes newer terms like iBook and eBay that are more relevant to modern writing (10.8, 380).
- In terms of grammar, some of the rules that always give editors trouble are more explicitly outlined and in more detail. There's a longer section on the use of that and which (7.2, 318), which I still have to look up occasionally. A final ruling on the health care vs healthcare debate (always 2 words, per AMA, 11.1, 395). And more specific rules on false/parenthetical plurals and sentences with compound subjects (7.8)
- A change in the use of states in references. All will use postal codes now, instead of the former abbreviations (14.5, 451-455).
- An expanded section on international currency (18.5.12, 817-819).
- The section on terminology has been expanded to include information about different specialties, including psychiatry, ophthalmology, and obstetrics (Ch 15). This section also includes a new chart with human viruses that is expanded and easier to navigate (15.14.3, 762-767).
- There is a more comprehensive copyediting section, including information on editing numerical information (21.1, 907; 23.1, 929-933).
- And finally, and most importantly for all newer medical editors and writing, there is a more informative resources guide with professional organizations aimed at scientific writers and editors as well as grammar and editing resources (25, 967-976).
As a whole, I'm very pleased with the new edition of the AMA style guide, and can't wait to incorporate the new changes into my own work.
Average customer rating:
- a powerful telling of one refugee's story and how it fits into a broader disaster
- Straightforward, Unpretentious Memoir
- A good book that gets better with diatance
- A thought provoking and enjoyable read
- MUST READ
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What Is the What
Dave Eggers
Manufacturer: McSweeney's
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1932416641 |
Book Description
In a heartrending and astonishing novel, Eggers illuminates the history of the civil war in Sudan through the eyes of Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee now living in the United States. We follow his life as he's driven from his home as a boy and walks, with thousands of orphans, to Ethiopia, where he finds safety — for a time. Valentino's travels, truly Biblical in scope, bring him in contact with government soldiers, janjaweed-like militias, liberation rebels, hyenas and lions, disease and starvation — and a string of unexpected romances. Ultimately, Valentino finds safety in Kenya and, just after the millennium, is finally resettled in the United States, from where this novel is narrated. In this book, written with expansive humanity and surprising humor, we come to understand the nature of the conflicts in Sudan, the refugee experience in America, the dreams of the Dinka people, and the challenge one indomitable man faces in a world collapsing around him.
Customer Reviews:
a powerful telling of one refugee's story and how it fits into a broader disaster.......2007-09-29
Over several years, a refugee (named Achak) from Sudan who has resettled in the United States (one of the "lost boys of Sudan") told his story to Dave Eggers. Eggers wrote a novel based on the story, and the result is excellent. Leaping back and forth through time, the fictional Achak tells of how he is forced from his village by the Sudanese civil war, travels hundreds (thousands?) of miles on foot from country to country and refugee camp to camp, and then how he arrives in the United States and adjust to life there.
Several times early in the reading I wondered, Why didn't Eggers just write the story of this guy's life rather than a novel "based" on it? Eventually I could see that the novel allowed Eggers to bring in characters, sub-stories, and dialogue to teach us not only Achak's story but also about the broader conflict, the other Sudanese conflict in Darfur, and the problems encountered by a broader net of re-settled refugees. Eggers seeks to (and I believe manages to) give enthrall us with Achak and convey an impressive amount of information at the same time.
I found one of his narrative devices mildly distracting: Achak narrates from the present-day, resettled in the USA, and most of flashbacks are in the form of his mentally telling people around him his story. For example, he meets someone at his work and imagines telling them about the time his buddy got eaten by a lion. But that's a quibble.
The audiobook reading by Dion Graham (published by BBC Audiobooks America) is very well done.
Note on content: Much of this book takes place in a war zone, so we see violence and intense human suffering. And in the USA, there is a mugging that involves lots of strong language (all in the book's first 50 pages).
Straightforward, Unpretentious Memoir.......2007-09-27
I'm a fan of Eggers, and even though I'm not crazy about how the precious and overly self-aware syle of writing in AHWOSG has seeped into literature, I think he has been an important influence. I was pleasantly surprised at how well he avoided his trademark style in this novel -- not that it's a bad thing in other contexts -- but because it wouldn't have worked here. As a result, this is a kind of sparsely (and well) written story. The only thing I thought was a little contrived was the device used to tell the story, which is that Valentino is telling his story to his captor in a robbery, and then some others. They aren't listening, so he's kind of recounting the story to the reader as though he was talking to the captor. I suppose it makes it more interesting than a simple straight-out memoir, but it's a little contrived. The fact that the modern day asides are so short is evidence that they could have just been cut out altogether. (One could say it's just creative, I suppose).
I found the story very interesting, and I would not have made it through any form of nonfiction about the same topic. THis is a credit to Eggers. The character development is credible, and the way he weaves the question "What is the What" through the novel is compelling and profound. It's very well constructed and told, and could be read by a wide age range. It's also fairly evenhanded in its treatment of the politics, and never gets preachy or self-important. (He in fact debunks many of the exaggerated stories of the Lost Boys, which I thought was a pretty brave thing to do).
If you are a fan of Eggers, you will appreciate this book unless you're just in love with his schtick, which is absent. If you're one of the haters (people love to hate AHWOSG, it seems), you might want to give this a try. I think Eggers will go down as a very important writer and this is very well done. And the profits go to charity!
A good book that gets better with diatance.......2007-09-08
There have been enough African horror stories in recent years to constitute a genre - the heart of darkness narrative. Most readers turn to these tales with a mixture of humane concern and prurient fascination. Back in Conrad's day, the European or American narrator generally found himself caught between warm fuzzy liberalism and the horror. In recent years, African narrators, often children, have been the ones whose innocence has been challenged by horrendous deeds and bestial actions done in the name of liberation but in the service of greed. The thin line between naivete and cynicism is particularly treacherous for writers who lived to tell the tale, but haven't had enough time to fully see their experience in perspective. By working with Dave Eggers, Valentino Achak Deng filters the story of his years as a lost boy, and thus provides the reader a chance to get close to him. I tend to shy away from confessional narrators like Ismael Beah, whose A Long Way Gone was too direct for my taste. I appreciated his tale, but it seemed too naïve.
The magic of What is the What is impressive. By creating creaky framing devices (the break-in of Part 1) and historical coincidences (the death of Diana Spencer and the destruction of the twin towers occur on significant days in Valentino's life), Eggers reminds us that this is a fiction based on a real life and actual incidents in Sudan's history. In the process of peeling off the artifice, the reader paradoxically draws closer to the young man who narrates the story. He preserves some mystery because we know that we don't know all that he might have said. We long to see him more clearly, just as we gaze at the drawing on the cover and wish that his eyes and features weren't obscured by shadow. But Valentino is himself trying to uncover the mysteries of fate, self, and the elusive "What," which seems both mystical and concrete.
There were times when I wanted more historical detail - religious conflicts and the promise of oil wealth explain the problem in broad terms, but Sudan has been part of public discourse for so long that one longs for more nuance. However, Valentino is not a political scientist, and the balance between naivete and knowledge is delicate. Eggers provides promising leads for the reader who wants more history. I loved the way the past and present narratives intertwined to make us sympathetic to Valentino's need for love and affection. His relationship with Tabitha was particularly affecting because we first experienced her in America and only gradually learned about the origins of their relationship. After he leaves his hometown to journey across Sudan with the Lost Boys, we forget about his parents for a long time, but we feel their absence keenly. Deng and Eggers have created a story rich in emotion and human feeling, no small task when facing the horrors of Sudan. In the end, we only know a little more about the situation in Sudan and Darfur, but we feel as if we have a Sudanese friend. And yet we can't even recognize his face or say for sure if his name is really Valentino Achak Deng.
A thought provoking and enjoyable read.......2007-09-05
Dave Eggers' What is the What is a fictional, yet truthful account of Sudanese refugee Valentino Deng and his life throughout civil war stricken Sudan and the United States of America. Eggers' retelling of Deng's life is not one of a robotic biography, but rather a fluid reminiscence interspersed with moments of the present and laced throughout with Eggers' own voice. The story is simultaneously frightening and beautiful, a feeling created by a combination of Deng's personal strength and Eggers' unique sense of timing and dark humor. This voice pokes fun at the ironies between Deng's life in America and Sudan. For example, the American Deng works the front counter at a health club in a county where almost 60 million people are overweight but while in Sudan he tried to get an extra ration card because food was scarce. There doesn't seem to by any anger at these ironies, Deng appears to be more confused by them then anything.
The plot is exciting enough to hold one's interest and be fun, yet still contains enough truth and soul to it to make you really think about Deng's plights during his journey. It is the ability to maintain this balance which truly takes the book from an interesting tale to a piece of literary art. The story itself is not only beautifully written, but expertly paced; on multiple occasions I found myself ready to put the book down for the night and turned the page to discover that I was at the end of a chapter. It is those little things that make the book an absolute joy to read. Also, I feel that I must mention the hardcover art is absolutely beautiful and protected the book from harm when I spilled a cup of tea on it, which is something I was pleasantly surprised by. What is the What is an great thought provoking, yet very accessible read, and I would recommend it to everyone.
MUST READ.......2007-09-04
The book was recommended by a Bible study leader and it did not disappoint. I learned so much regarding the past and current situation in Sudan (not necessarily the point of the book) that I am now embarrased about my previous ignorance. This book changed the way I look at the world. I highly recommend it!
Average customer rating:
- Missing color and texture
- A three-star thriller
- Compelling story of life in America after 9/11
- Clever, insightful, entertaining -- faultless prose and construction
- Reluctant Of All the Fundamentals
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The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Mohsin Hamid
Manufacturer: Harcourt
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0151013047
Release Date: 2007-04-03 |
Amazon.com
Mohsin Hamid's first novel, Moth Smoke, dealt with the confluence of personal and political themes, and his second, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, revisits that territory in the person of Changez, a young Pakistani. Told in a single monologue, the narrative never flags. Changez is by turns naive, sinister, unctuous, mildly threatening, overbearing, insulting, angry, resentful, and sad. He tells his story to a nameless, mysterious American who sits across from him at a Lahore cafe. Educated at Princeton, employed by a first-rate valuation firm, Changez was living the American dream, earning more money than he thought possible, caught up in the New York social scene and in love with a beautiful, wealthy, damaged girl. The romance is negligible; Erica is emotionally unavailable, endlessly grieving the death of her lifelong friend and boyfriend, Chris.
Changez is in Manila on 9/11 and sees the towers come down on TV. He tells the American, "...I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased... I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees..." When he returns to New York, there is a palpable change in attitudes toward him, starting right at immigration. His name and his face render him suspect.
Ongoing trouble between Pakistan and India urge Changez to return home for a visit, despite his parents' advice to stay where he is. While there, he realizes that he has changed in a way that shames him. "I was struck at first by how shabby our house appeared... I was saddened to find it in such a state... This was where I came from... and it smacked of lowliness." He exorcises that feeling and once again appreciates his home for its "unmistakable personality and idiosyncratic charm." While at home, he lets his beard grow. Advised to shave it, even by his mother, he refuses. It will be his line in the sand, his statement about who he is. His company sends him to Chile for another business valuation; his mind filled with the troubles in Pakistan and the U.S. involvement with India that keeps the pressure on. His work and the money he earns have been overtaken by resentment of the United States and all it stands for.
Hamid's prose is filled with insight, subtly delivered: "I felt my age: an almost childlike twenty-two, rather than that permanent middle-age that attaches itself to the man who lives alone and supports himself by wearing a suit in a city not of his birth." In telling of the janissaries, Christian boys captured by Ottomans and trained to be soldiers in the Muslim Army, his Chilean host tells him: "The janissaries were always taken in childhood. It would have been far more difficult to devote themselves to their adopted empire, you see, if they had memories they could not forget." Changez cannot forget, and Hamid makes the reader understand that--and all that follows. --Valerie Ryan
A Conversation with Mohsin Hamid
Set in modern-day Pakistan, Mohsin Hamid's debut novel, Moth Smoke, went on to win awards and was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His bold new novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is a daring, fast-paced monologue of a young Pakistani man telling his life story to a mysterious American stranger. It's a controversial look at the dark side of the American Dream, exploring the aftermath of 9/11, international unease, and the dangerous pull of nostalgia. Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons shared an e-mail exchange with Mohsin Hamid to talk about his powerful new book
Read the Amazon.com Interview with Mohsin Hamid
Book Description
At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with an uneasy American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting . . .
Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by the elite "valuation" firm of Underwood Samson. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his infatuation with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore.
But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love.
Customer Reviews:
Missing color and texture.......2007-09-10
The language in this novella is fluid; it is a short piece (framed as a tale told over a dinner) that pulls in the reader. The narrator (Chargez) spins his story of his initial embrace and ultimate rejection of the upwardly mobile existence of a Pakistani-born Princeton alum living in corporate America post-9/11. The book tries to answer big questions about why America both attracts and repels the alien observer in the early 21st century. It disappoints. The novel surfs instead of diving deep into motivations and milieu. The characters surrounding the narrator (a sad beautiful WASP love interest, a workplace mentor) are drawn sketchily. Is it because these Americans are ultimately unfathomable to Chargez? Perhaps, but the characterization of the narrator, and his transformation, also remains oddly unspecific. There is a lack of detailed descriptions of either New York after 9/11 (which had a distinct feel) or Lahore. Chargez watches Afghanistan being bombed, and tensions rising in South Asia, and he increasingly finds himself questioning his role in his adopted country. His disillusionment seems reasonable enough (we know from poll statistics the punishment that US image has taken globally in the last 6 years), but Hamid does not offer probing insight to the issue. The book would be strengthened by more particulars about the situation and attitudes of South Asian and Muslim immigrants to the US. Chargez's transformation and radicalization comes so quickly. The novel's conclusion offers a nice ambiguity which would have been welcome throughout.
A three-star thriller.......2007-08-28
I suspect there will be two different categories of readers attracted to this book: those who have heard it is a good thriller and those who have heard it is a novel of literary merit...those approaching it as a thriller will be more satisfied, but it does not quite make it in either category, at least for me.
"The Reluctant Fundamentalist" tells the story of a Pakistani named Changez as he narrates his life story to an American in a cafe in Lahore, post 9-11. There were some aspects of the novel that I liked... Changez, has a firm and consistent tone throughout, and his love interest, Erica, is believable, at least at first. While the prose is well-crafted (Changez adopts a somewhat archaic and formal tone to the American stranger) the claims for the beauty of the language in other reviews seem somewhat overblown.
There are some tricks played with the reader, based mainly on our assumptions about the characters, but I did not find this very clever. It heightens the suspense, but rather in the fashion of a movie where the fright device suddenly jumps out at the viewer. But in a purportedly realistic novel, one likes to have the details right or credibility suffers. The business setting, Changez's job as a "valuation analyist" at an American hot-shot "valuation firm," just did not seem credible to me...such jobs, mainly done by investment banks or consultants, would not be assigned to a 22-year-old fresh out of undergrad Princeton. Although the author has reportedly worked as a financial consultant in New York, the work setting did not convince. Changez's firm would not send a team of 5 or 6 to Manila for three months to "value" a local CD manufacturer...I mean, what were they doing, counting the paperclips? We are also told that it is up to Changez to devise his own "valuation model," a strangely ad hoc and imprecise approach melded to the unbelievably precise. Perhaps the author is trying to make some sort of point about Changez's character, in that he has aspects of the precise and vague in his personality, but if so, it didn't work for me and just detracted from credibility, important in a thriller. Without giving away any essential plot developments, Changez's later "change" I found rather forced and inexplicable. A-type personalities who get into Princeton just don't act this way, and that also detracted from his girlfriend Ericka's believability, who similarly went to Princeton. Changez seems always to be graded and judged, at Princeton, and at the firm, yet there seems little questioning of the validity of this system. Is he just a grade-grubbing bourgeois striving to climb into the upper ranks of the plutocracy or does he see this more cynically? The tension does build as the narration proceeds, but there are continual nagging questions about credibility that slowly add up throughout but thr reader is always aware of authorial manipulation throughout. There is little discussion of issues of religion, class or race and that too detracted from the credibility of the novel's resolution. But the author deserves credit for his handling of this theme, identity problems of a Pakistani in post 9-11 America, but I wish he had set it in a background with which he may have had more familiarity.
Right now, this is long-listed for the Booker Prize. Of others on the list, I have read only Ian McEwan's "On Chesil Beach" a stronger novel, at least in terms of the prose, but it is not McEwan at his best. I also read several Booker-eligible novels that never made the list but should have(particularly John Burnside's "The Devil's Footprints")... there are stronger candidates on the Booker list than "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" and the list itself seems very weak this year. But if one is after a decent short thriller to occupy oneself for a few hours, this may serve the purpose.
Compelling story of life in America after 9/11.......2007-08-22
This book is compelling on the 9/11 issue without being overbearing or preachy. In these times, that's a hard feat to pull off.
I liked the narration, and how the conceit of two men talking in a Lahore restaurant allowed Hamid to move from story to story, letting us know the events that shaped Changez's life. It's tough to describe how conflicted first generation immigrants feel when American actions cause strife in their homelands. But through Changez, Hamid shows the reader the many different motivations at play (Changez's family, his sense of alienation from American culture, the feeling of being an outsider). I am also from Pakistan, so the book resonated deeply with me. I've been in this country for almost 18 years. Even so, if Pakistan was to be attacked, I don't know that I could support the US. The conflicted feelings Changez experiences are likely more common than most would like to believe.
The narrative is well-paced and gives the reader little surprises at just the right moments. Particularly well done is the atmosphere of the Lahore tea shop. Hamid does a masterful job of conveying the lazy, but tense atmosphere present in many such places.
Finally, the story of Changez's love interest is a good bit of symbolism. Before 9/11, she's bubbly and joyous. After, she deteriorates and decays, unable to get over the problems of her past. In a lesser author's hand, this would have been heavy handed, but Hamid makes the depiction nuanced enough to make her a real character.
I am anxious to read Mr. Hamid's next book. Pakistan needs more authors like him.
Clever, insightful, entertaining -- faultless prose and construction.......2007-08-14
On first glance, "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid appears to be about a brilliant young Pakistani national named Changez who finishes at the top of his class at Princeton and is hired by Underwood Samson, the most prestigious and world-famous corporate valuation firm based in New York City. We are encouraged by the title and the dark overtones of the dramatic monologue in which the book is narrated, to believe that somehow, by the end of the novel, Changez turns into a Muslim fundamentalist and implied terrorist. Wow, now that is a theme that really hits a bull's-eye with the American psyche!
Most Americans are sincerely confused by what is happening in the world today. We see rampant anti-Americanism, frightening Islamic terrorism, news of successful professionals being recruited into the ranks of the terrorists, and we can't imagine why. We hope to get inside the head of one of these characters and see the world from their point of view--perhaps finally understand what drives them to these drastic ends.
The book delivers on these issues and much more--very clever indeed! The monologue is narrated with spare, well-crafted prose that is often old-fashioned--and disconcerting. The archaic prose casts the story in a shroud of strangeness elevating the suspense and making the whole an unequivocal, unrelenting page-turner.
There is a marvelous linguistic and thematic trick built into that word "fundamentalist" used in the title and the text of the book. In the entire novel, religion is never once mentioned. Fundamentalism, in the context of terrorism, always refers to religious fundamentalism. But this book is not about a budding Muslim fundamentalist. So what type of fundamentalist is this, and why is he reluctant?
This is about a man fighting two inner battles: one moral and one political. In the beginning of his skyrocketing American dream career, Changez is temporarily blinded to one of his most ingrained core moral values: compassion. He comes from a family and a culture where people, no matter how poor, routinely celebrate their greatest joys by giving generously to the poor. When Changez comes home to Pakistan for a brief visit with his family, his mother dances ecstatically twirling a 100-rupee note over her head. What a wonderful image! Now, ask yourself how we in the West celebrate our greatest achievements and joys, and let this, and the other similar nuggets of open, cross-cultural insights peppered throughout this work, ignite your thinking about contemporary world issues!
In the beginning, Changez feels stirrings of compassion for the "soon-to-be-redundant workers" (p. 99) that will, no doubt, fall victim to his brilliantly accurate valuation analyses. Sensing this, Jim, Changez' corporate mentor at Underwood Samson, coaches him often to "focus on the fundamentals"--the bottom line, the numbers, don't let emotion or compassion get in the way. However, by the time the book draws to a close--when Changez is in Valparaiso, Chile helping valuate a troubled book publishing firm that spends too much of its assets publishing worthy academic, literary, and poetic books that eventually end up losing money for the firm--here Changez becomes the reluctant fundamentalist of the book's title. He can no longer focus only on the bottom line. He can no longer ignore the deep core of compassion that is his personal moral compass.
So, does he also become a fundamentalist terrorist? The author leaves that up to you to decide. The ending is deftly and provokingly ambiguous. But no matter which ending you choose to imagine--and you will vacillate--the overall cross-cultural thematic points have already been made, and that is what is important and what endures long after you've finished the book.
There is also the inner political battle that Changez undergoes during the course of the novel. He begins his job at Underwood Samson a few months before 9/11. How he reacts to that news, and how America changes in the wake of that news--both form crucial themes that resonate throughout. In many ways the book is about the dangers of not embracing change. The author and the main character find much fault with America's fundamental backwards-looking reaction after 9/11. Instead of trying to come to terms with how America must fundamentally change in the new post-9/11 world order, Changez sees Americans retreating back to an old-fashioned nostalgia for America, the righteous superpower, the imperialistic dominator of the globe. To Changez, America's self-righteous nostalgia is a terminal illness. To mirror this theme, there is lovely parallel story of Changez' love for the mentally fragile Erica. She fails precisely because she cannot free herself from her nostalgia for her dead former lover. She cannot move forward with her life, despite the fact that the reader can see very clearly that Changez and Erica have the makings of a truly enduring love.
So if America is failing to change, and Erica fails to change, what happens to Changez? He changes (change-ez)! [Is this, too, along with the word "fundamentalist," perhaps another linguistic thematic pun?] We the reader are left to figure out if the main character's change is for the better, or not. Thus the ambiguous ending leaves us wondering.
This novel is so clever! It really makes you think. It entertains with suspense as well as giving you an achingly beautiful love story--and underlying all is much to be learned about the current state of the world.
I recommend this book highly, as I also do one of the other top contenders for the 2007 Booker Prize, namely Ian McEwen's "On Chesil Beach." (I've also reviewed this book here on Amazon.) Personally, I hope Hamid's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" will win. I believe it clearly deserves it.
Reluctant Of All the Fundamentals.......2007-08-13
Rarely will I describe a book as beautiful. Yet I cannot think of a more befitting descriptive for Mohsin Hamid's THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST.
The story centers around a meeting at an outdoor café in Lahore between a Pakistani man named Changez and a suspicious-looking American with the bearing that makes him out to be either military or intelligence agent. Changez engages the man initially in tea and conversation. After awhile, seeing the American most attentive --and also a bit wary of his surroundings, the Pakistani orders dinner for the two of them; meanwhile going deeper into his memories about times spent in America, as a student at Princeton and later as a rising star at a New York valuation firm. Changez also recollects his budding romance with Erica, the daughter of a wealthy investment banker who was sure to enable Changez's entry to high society. Changez was well on his way to success when the twin towers of the World Trade Center came tumbling down on September 11, 2001.
Changez's reaction to their collapse alarms and confuses him; he finds himself smiling and overjoyed. The elation, however, isn't over the deaths of 3,000 innocent people, but rather thet there are those who are able to strike at the United States --an entity which has long held him in awe with its almost limitless power, wealth and ability to affect the world: sometimes for the best, sometimes for the worst. As America becomes enraged and seeks revenge upon anything and anyone Muslim, he reads reports of Pakistan becoming coerced into the war against Afghanistan and of India taking advantage of this situation threatening his homeland. Becoming ever more distanced from our society and his work, it becomes increasingly harder for Changez to continue at his career. A job which he now sees as dependent upon the expense and suffering of others. Making matters worse, Erica, the one person who perhaps could have kept him grounded and focused, suffers a mental relapse over the shock of 9/11. Erica slips back into the debilitating state she suffered over the death of her longtime childhood friend and lover, Chris, two years earlier. Eventually Changez returns to Pakistan. Changez today is a different man from the ambitious and obedient corporate cog he described living back in New York. Yet as he speaks to the American about his country's indifference to the rest of the world, about America's unconcern for the expense her wars of revenge are costing others, he still he cannot hide his love for America. However, it is no longer the romanticizing love of an infatuated innocent, instead it is the love one has for another depite all the other's faults and abuses. A love reluctant, but love nonetheless.
The monologue telling of this story is beguiling. Changez holds the reader spellbound as he keeps the unidentified American man's interest for hours. Mohsin Hamid's gift for words and symbolism, and the intricacies he creates with them, is astounding. Admittedly, some of Changez actions and statements will repel many of us American readers (his gleeful response to the jets slamming into the Twin Towers certainly did it to me). Keep in mind, however, that this is a voice which exists amongst millions of those out there, from Totonto and London, to Pakistan and Indonesia. It is a voice we have been told to ignore, but it still won't go away. That's because it is not only the voice of the popeyed rageboys constantly being shown in our media, but also the voice of men like Changez, who tried making sense of America's dichotomies, but can no longer struggle to reconcile the willful ignorance and arrogant indifference that exists within our nation's beauty and spirit. So, we may call them "fundamentalists," but we must start to recognize that many are reluctant to be such. They have the rageboys, but we have the coldly calculating geopolitical experts, who smile and assure us of our "national interests." Changes must come from all of us.
Amazon.com
A graduate of Duke University in 2002 and an analyst for J.P. Morgan for a few years after that, Dana Vachon is a writing wunderkind along the lines of Jay McInerney in Bright Lights, Big City and Bret Easton Ellis in Less Than Zero. However, the similarity ends with the theme of young guys on the razzle, because Vachon's protagonist, unlike his predecessors, observes and learns without falling into the honey pot. Tommy Quinn graduates from Georgetown and lands a job with J.S. Spenser, an investment banking firm. His major was Interdisciplinary Studies, a kind of Liberal Arts wastebasket, and he knows nothing about finance. In the brain-deadening Spenser training program he hooks up with Roger Thorne, a really crass human being, but one who knows all the moves. The genesis of the friendship sets the tone rather well: They are both wearing Gucci loafers and Rolex watches.
The story begins at Roger's engagement party, with Tommy waiting for his erstwhile girlfriend Frances to arrive. Everyone thinks that she has been at a spa, but she has really been in an upscale Home for the Unsure, being ministered to by a freaky shrink. The story then moves backward through Tommy's ruminations about meeting Roger, "the John Audubon of preppy flesh," and about connecting with Terence Mathers, Spenser's guru of mergers and acquisitions. At the end of Mathers's first speech to the new Spenserites, Tommy says: "We had all partaken of the capitalist Kool-Aid and the applause was as much a tribute to the stupidity of young men and women after four years of elite education as it was to the success of Spenser's training program." Greed is definitely good in this atmosphere--the more the better--but Tommy is not really a full-fledged participant. After Tommy blows his first assignment, he and Roger are sent to Cabo San Lucas on a major deal. What happens there is life-threatening and hilariously over-the-top but perfectly plausible and moves Tommy to rethink his life path. Vachon has left his own fledgling financial career behind, and instead has written a first-rate first novel that is smart, funny, witty, and wise. --Valerie Ryan
Book Description
A stylish and hilarious novel about the lives and loves of well-to-do young Manhattanites in their first year on Wall Street, destined to become one of the year's most buzzed-about debuts.
Mergers & Acquisitions is the story of Tommy Quinn, a recent Georgetown grad who has just landed the job of his dreams as an investment banker at J. S. Spenser, and the perfect girl, Frances Sloan, the daughter of one of New York's oldest moneyed families. As he travels from the most exclusive ball rooms of the Racquet and Tennis Club to the stuffiest boardrooms of J. S. Spenser, from the golf links of Piping Rock to the bedrooms of Park Avenue, and from the debauched yacht of a Mexican billionaire to the Ritalin-strewn prep-school dorm room of his younger brother, he finds that the job and the girl are not what they once seemed.
Sharply written, fast-paced, and bitingly witty, Mergers & acquisitions is a compulsively readable story of Manhattan's young, ambitious, and wealthy. Set against the backdrop of money, lust, power, corruption, cynicism, energy, and excitement that is Wall Street, it is suffused with an authenticity that only an author who lives in that world can provide. A former investment banker at J. P. Morgan, Vachon offers an insider's point of view on the financial scene, and he knows the moneyed turf of Manhattan inside out.
Customer Reviews:
A light read.......2007-09-01
I did enjoy this book, but I wish the author had written a few more chapters on actually working in the office of J.S.Spenser. The author does have a comic way of writing, I liked the part where the main chararter converted the US dollar into itself! I also liked how the book was written, it started in the present at his friend's engagment, then the next chapters where in the past and the last chapter was at the engagment party. Though I did find the main character's girlfriend a bit disturbing.
Hilarious and Brilliant!.......2007-08-04
A comic romp dealing with the financial world and early employment after college. Some passages are so funny, I laughed out loud! The characters, even though seemingly over the top at times, ring true, and present archetypes that are unforgettable. The romantic plot line is heartfelt and also has a profound feeling of felt life. I look forward to more novels by this remarkable talent!
Excellent Effort-Mixed Results.......2007-07-07
The book starts out great, but then it fades off the map. It is similar to Hemingway's -To Have and Have Not-. Since I have worked on The Street, and I am a writer, my hopes were very high. However, I have not been able to finish the book.
The author has some talent, and I wish him luck.
fear and loathing in park-on-lexington.......2007-07-05
I can't believe the dichotomy in the reviews of this book! It's either the best book ever written, or the worst. For my part, I'll give it 3 stars...an enjoyable read that was light-hearted and fun...an entertaining mind-candy romp, but certainly not a 5-star classic. It was exactly what I expected going in to it, and it delivered.
I really wasn't keen on Roger Thorpe's character, though. He was the most colorful character in the book; and as much of a slime he was, I think he could have been more realistic, and yet taken the character further into slimedom with his unique ability to slide through life despite his incompetence. But the "dudes" and "babes" made him more of a sixteen-year-old punk skater rather than the uppercrust moneyed college grad he was. I may be missing the point, but I would have enjoyed an underlying "knowing" of "not knowing" in his attitude...and accidental tourist, per se.
I will say this, however...I relish the thought of the book being re-written: but instead of Tommy Quinn narrating, Hunter S Thompson steps into the role. As I read the book, I kept wondering just how far out-of-hand Tommy's situations could truly have gotten with Gonzo at the wheel. I kept waiting for Fear and Loathing on Wall Street, but all I got was Mergers and Acquisitions. Perhaps Vachon's next book...?
Still, I highly recommend it. Pour yourself a Sapphire and Xanax (or three) and finish the book in one sitting. Enjoy!
How fun!.......2007-06-14
As a Wharton MBA who has observed this scene for 20+ years, I found this book to be an over the top spoof of high finance and NYC society. If one were pitching it as a movie, I would say it is The Great Gatsby meets Catcher in the Rye meets Bright Lights, Big City. A great, light read that had me laughing out loud! Enjoy!
Amazon.com
In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this on his first try.
The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule. ("...I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.")
Some of the plot's turns and twists may be somewhat implausible, but Hosseini has created characters that seem so real that one almost forgets that The Kite Runner is a novel and not a memoir. At a time when Afghanistan has been thrust into the forefront of America's collective consciousness ("people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz"), Hosseini offers an honest, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but always heartfelt view of a fascinating land. Perhaps the only true flaw in this extraordinary novel is that it ends all too soon. --Gisele Toueg
Book Description
The timely and critically acclaimed debut novel that's becoming a word-of-mouth phenomenon...
Download Description
"Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable, beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan nonetheless grow up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a prominent and wealthy man, while Hassan , the son of Amir's father's servant, is a Hazara, member of a shunned ethnic minority. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When the Soviets invade and Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind him. The Kite Runner is a novel about friendship, betrayal, and the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons, and the power of their lies. Written against a history that has not been told in fiction before, The Kite Runner describes the rich culture and beauty of a land in the process of being destroyed. But with the devastation, Khaled Hosseini also gives us hope: through the novel's faith in the power of reading and storytelling, and in the possibilities he shows for redemption."
Customer Reviews:
Review of The Kite Runner.......2007-10-10
The plot line of this novel is AMAZING however the author chooses at times to bludgeon us with language at the moments when he should pull back and let the horror of what he's describing speak for itself. Especially at the conclusion whichis the coincidence of all coincidences - I almost ended the book early as the writing fell apart and was so melodramatic. Howver the descriptions of daily life are vivid and sensitive and I recommend the book for this alone.
good book.......2007-10-09
i had to read this book back when i was in high school and i was really surprised to find this book to be good. I personally really like this book and finished reading it in no time. I don't know what it is, but this is one book you will always get mixed reviews. It all depends on what kind of books you like,There were some parts of the story that were overrated or unnecessary.
Plot device after plot device after plot device.. .......2007-10-08
The Kite Runner isn't "brilliant" nor it is a "work of genius" Rather, quite simply, The Kite Runner is good story about a boy named Amir and his "friend" Hassan. Oh, and Amir's father, Baba, too. Oh, and Afghanistan.
After hearing rave reviews about this book for years, I decided to pick up a copy to read while between classes. What I found was nothing more than a story that perhaps would have been better if it were told around a campfire or when your Afghani uncle comes over for a visit. The writing style I could let slide - hey we're all not Hemingway. What I could not let slide, however, were the ridiculous plot devices that the author employed (and the 5-star reviewers call "brilliant") to "move" the story along..
Soon after I began reading, it became painfully obvious to me that the author is well aware, I mean WELL AWARE of the plot device known as "Chekhov's Shotgun" (which basically states that if there is a shotgun hanging on the wall in one scene, it had better be used in a later scene).. It is an amateur move and the more I read, the more and more frustrated I became by this and the other unbelievable predictable "twists" that kept popping up. Eventually, I had to put the book down and walk away for a while because I knew what was going to happen - we all knew what was going to happen.
All in all, plot twist, prediit is a good story. But I don't believe it to be worthy of the critical acclaim that it received when first released. Perhaps there is a feeling of guilt because it is about a country we are not occupying that led to so many jumping on board the "brilliant" bandwagon.. The narrator is an unlikable wimp and it was completely ridiculous to think for a second that he would suddenly "man up" and face Assef (or even go to Kabul for that matter). I say this only because we as readers "knew" him from birth and all throughout his life nothing gave any indication that he would have it in him to do what he did. Ugh. I feel as though I need something to cleanse my reading palate.
It Involves Afghanistan .......2007-10-08
I read many books and write many Amazon reviews, but there's not much I can add that the previous 2,042 other reviewers have not already said. I picked up `The Kite Runner' a year ago at a used book sale for the local library, but put it on my stack of TBR's (to-be-read). Frankly, the gushing acclaim and high-powered publicity put me off the book (e.g. the back jacket has plugs from Diane Sawyer and People magazine, not sources I rely on for book suggestions). A debut novel getting that much praise put me on guard.
News of the movie adaptation's imminent release finally got me to give it a go. I finished less than 24 hours later. Few books grab this reader by the collar and demand absorption. `The Kite Runner' did and I simply can't recommend it highly enough.
I will skimp on a summary of the book - to paraphrase Woody Allen after speed-reading War and Peace, it involves Afghanistan. While Hosseini does wonderfully create a sense of place (or rather two Afghanistans separated by 25 years and a millennial view), this tale involves much more. `The Kite Runner' is a powerful roller-coaster of human drama: love, joy, hate, cruelty, fear, betrayal, abandonment, commitment, loyalty, pride, shame, happiness, pain. Hosseini delivers several powerful gut punches (perhaps not all of them entirely fair or necessary) along the way.
Tom Wolfe has commented that many good young writers only ever write one really good book because that first effort is largely autobiographical and they can only tell that's story once. Reviews of Hosseini's second book A Thousand Splendid Suns suggest he is the real deal.
Read with Caution.......2007-10-07
I agree with the vast majority of reviewers that this is an excellent novel - unique, well-written, and haunting. There is no reason for me to reiterate the praises. I am writing this review simply to warn people with delicate sensibilities like mine to be forewarned before buying this book: the "terrible incident" everyone refers to is the brutal rape of a young boy by a pack of sociopathic, privileged teens. Perhaps because I am the mother of a young boy, I found the scene totally gut-wrenching and utterly horrible. I couldn't finish the book. So, my point is simple: don't read the book if you might be upset by a graphic description of the rape of a young, sweet boy.
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- A to Z Mysteries: The White Wolf (A Stepping Stone Book(TM))
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- Captive
- Caring Enough to Lead: Schools and the Sacred Trust
- Catherine, Called Birdy (rpkg) (Trophy Newbery)
- Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal
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