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User reviews
I’ve just spent the last two hour or so reading reviews here on LibraryThing and on Amazon for Khaled Hosseini’s second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. It’s been over a year since I read The Kite Runner. I finished A Thousand Splendid Suns a few days ago.
I didn’t set out to read so many reviews, but the more I read, the more a pattern started to emerge that I wanted to verify. This is what I discovered.
Most people, whether they rated the book three, four, or five stars, said that they enjoyed the reading experience, and that they would recommend the book to other readers. They were spellbound by the characters and their harrowing tale of emotional and physical survival. It was an eye-opening experience for them to learn about the history, people, and culture of Afghanistan— country so often in the news.
But why the wide differences in ratings from people who all really liked the book and recommended it to others? And, why did so many readers start off their reviews by saying that they were disappointed?
Simply, it comes down to two very different types of readers. The lovers of modern literary fiction were disappointed. The lovers of well-written popular fiction were overjoyed.
The popular fiction lovers couldn’t help but love both The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. These people loved the experience of being submerged in a compelling plot that took them on a journey to a world they knew little about. They were enthralled by the many fully believable, yet totally alien characters, and they were spellbound by the strange other-worldly story lines. These readers cared little about the craft behind the novels.
On the other hand, the modern literary fiction readers believed that they had discovered an exhilarating new author. These folks found the prose in Hosseini’s debut novel to be fresh, open, gentle, perceptive, and intimate. They were eagerly awaiting his new novel. When these readers finished Part One of the new novel, they were pleased and thought they were settling down for another wonderful literary treat. However, that feeling quickly disappeared as they started reading the following three parts. As the structure of the novel began to unfold, these readers could see that the author had taken on a huge literary task, one far bigger than he could handle. Many felt that Hosseini was trying to squeeze what amounted to an Afghani version of War and Peace into a brief 350-page tale. In an effort to move the plot along and cover 40 years of recent Afghani history in the remaining three parts, something had to be sacrificed. What the readers started seeing was that the important secondary characters lacked depth, backstory, and believability. They started to appear more like stereotypes. Naturally, these readers were sorely disappointed.
Finally, there were a smaller number of reviewers who found significant political dishonesty in the story. They viewed the author as having purposefully managed the story line to avoid anything that might show American intervention in Afghanistan in a poor light.
So what do I believe? For me, A Thousand Splendid Suns is easily a five-star winner. Yes, I saw the change in depth of characterization that occurred after Part One, and this disturbed me. Yes, it became obvious to me that the author was carefully crafting the tale to avoid anything that would displease a Western audience, and this disappointed me. So, why was it still so easy for me to rate this novel with five stars? It is because the story was so amazingly spellbinding! It physically and emotionally transported me to a different world. In the last three parts, it was easy for me to let my mind create plausible backstories to flesh out the stereotypes and make these secondary characters more believable, and I did not dwell on the fact that this was unnecessary in Part One. I enjoyed my active participation in the story; it brought me deeper inside the plot. And perhaps best of all, this book taught me a great deal about Afghanistan.
1.0 out of 5 stars
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