I tried the Reading Around the World challenge a lot. My reading is quite diverse when it comes to where my books are coming from but whenever I attempted this challenge I wanted my main intention for reading the book to be that country. Usually I was doing it with a randomizer or by joining book clubs, but now I want to do it in a more organized way so I am taking the countries alphabetically. It should be easier to keep track now. I am starting with Afghanistan so who else to read if not the famous Khaled Hosseini?
PS: I usually do not review books that I rate under 3 stars (unless I really want to complain), but I will try to review all books in my Reading Around the World challenge.
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| ★★☆☆☆ |
Personally I was expecting the story of an unlikely friendship between the rich kid and the servant's kid. A tale about class differences and how we are not actually that different, but this book is actually about Amir, the rich kid, and his overwhelming guilt about something that happened in his childhood.
"It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime..."
Emotionally Manipulating
I am usually the kind of reader who would read anything, but I was always a bit reticent to historical fiction until I read The Kite Runner and I realised that it's not historical fiction per se that puts me off, but books that are trying way too hard to make me cry. I do not like it when the author is trying to emotionally manipulate the reader, especially if everything else about the book is weak.
And this is the case with The Kite Runner.
Unfortunately when every scene in your book is trying to get the reader to care and cry you end up with a story that is way too predictable.
"There is only one sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth."
Empty Promises
The book had a promising start and in spite of the heavy-handed writing, there are some descriptions and scenes that were really immersive - especially some scenes from Amir's childhood. But I did not get that many good moments to make up for the lackluster storytelling.
There are many themes in this novel, but they only scratch the surface and in the end I did not feel like there was anything meaningful in this book - how could I feel that if I couldn't connect with the characters or the story? I was definitely curious about the friendship, the class differences, fatherhood - I wanted more about the father, not more scenes, but better ones, more depth, homeland and loss of home, survivor's guilt and all that. Unfortunately the writing does not help with any of these themes.
There is so much telling and so little characterization. It focuses too much on melodrama and not enough on creating complex characters.
"And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too."
Cardboard Characters
Speaking of characterization... there are almost no characters in this book - and I do not mean that in a fun way. We have tons of characters, but they are there just to make the reader feel bad for them or to push the story forward.
There is no complexity to them and that includes our main character - who starts like an unlikeable little rich child and nothing from what happens in his life - and there is a lot going on, mostly to characters around him, not to him directly, but even so, he does not change one bit. He doesn't grow, he feels bad but that's it - he has one strong scene near the end (in front of a very cliche villain character) but only because he does not expect to survive.
It's really sad because there is clearly a lot to work with in this book. I wanted to see more of a parallel between Amir and Hassan, his childhood friend - I wanted to get to know Hassan, I wanted him to be a complex human being, not just a bland character that needs traumatised for the sake of our main character. There was so much more that could've been done with Hassan. There was so much more to do with Baba, the father - his views become the moral compass of this book, yet when his hypocrisy is revealed it's just brushed over it.
It's not enough to have good ideas, you need a good execution too. To end on a good note - I enjoyed the ending, I liked the hopefulness of it.
"Sad stories make good books."
But sadness alone is not enough to make a good book.