Walking In Wuhan

One of the advantages of the new job is being able to check out hardcover books for up to two weeks. So, I guess I'll start posting short, sporadic book reviews when I get around to them. My first book was, "A Thousand Splendid Suns," the follow-up to Khaled Hosseini's wildly popular "The Kite Runner," which spread across the country fueled by book clubs and the United States' involvement in Afghanistan. The book gave readers a first-hand look at life in Afghanistan and won universal praise. I read the book in China and found myself hooked, before an ending that read more like a bad action movie spoiled the whole thing for me.

So, with that in mind, I cautiously picked up Hosseini's follow-up. A Thousand Splendid Suns starts in 1970s Afghanistan and takes readers into the country's political turmoil through the overlapping stories of Mariam and Laila, who live separately, but then both end up wives to Rasheed, who forces his wives to wear burqas while ruling his home with an iron fist. Hosseini returns to his tried and true methods of story telling. His prose drives straight ahead, using characters with little nuance, plenty of rising action and a focus on emotion. You know who is good, who is bad and there is little variation. In many ways this works, because the characters never overshadow the country Hoseini uses for a canvas.