I loved both The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. In both of these novels, emotions come charging at you and continue like a thread throughout the narrative. Sometimes it hits you on top of the head. Whack! And the Mountains Echoed
starts out this way. But the rest of the novel creeps into the crevices of your mind and ensnares you. Here's how it begins: A poor Afghan farmer tells his two children, Abdullah and Pari, a story of an evil monster that forces a family to give up one of their children or the monster will kill them all. The family decides to make it a random choice and the one selected is their favorite. The father is beyond grief for his son believing, surely, that the monster has eaten his son. The father makes a pilgrimage to the castle of the monster only to find the son alive and well and thriving. He decides to leave the son rather than to bring him back to intense poverty. As the poor Afghan farmer tells this tale to his children, he says, "A finger had to be cut to save the hand." Read more...
