Ah, bugger!

This blip proves rather well, that I am not good at taking bug macro-type photos. It must be something to do with the liking bit, I'm sure. But, it is one of the Blipessentials, so I did have to try, didn't it?

Most of last week, I stole time after work to read 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' by Khaled Hosseini. Now that it's over, it does make me think. The author added an extended 'afterword' stating that comparisons with 'The Kite-runner' were inevitable and this had tortured him considerably. And so, by comparison, this book pales somewhat. As I later read, the former was written solely for the author himself, who with a day job as a doctor had no hopes of getting the book published. And this is what reflected in the way Kite-runner was written. It was a simple narrative about characters that came to life and were sketched with great precision. A perceptive reader would have been able to empathize with almost all of them. There was an undoubted autobiographical touch in the main character Amir and the book was about his journey. About him finding himself through a set of challenging circumstances. The writing was introspective; that is what drove the book. The events, as in all good books, were instruments through which the characters were revealed.

In this book however, it is evident the author has the reader very strongly in mind. A lot of events are foreshadowed as would be the case for a thriller or perhaps a crime or mystery novel, something that is fact driven, that makes suspense the key motivator for turning the pages. A good book, a book that can be re-read is always about the "how"s rather than the "what"s. Those are the books that last the test of time. Books where characters are real and not mere caricatures. Those are the books that bring stories to life, books that leave a lasting impression upon us. This book does not succeed very well in this area.

Also, there are far too many vivid descriptions of violence, which of course draw a reader's empathy, but good writing never needs to resort to the specificity of gory details to do so. The way suspense is woven into the prose often takes away the implied seriousness and makes the writing seem rather Sydney-Sheldon-like, like flashes of scenes from a movie.

The prose at times is lyrical, which does have its advantages. The descriptions of the cities, the houses, the lanes and the life lived in them are vivid, which is something I enjoyed. Even the way Afghanistan is painted is fantastic, and more than specific characters, it is the country as a whole that comes to life in this book. There are several instances where the ideological debate between reason and faith come up. And the way people cope with the harsh reality of it.

The unknown east does have a charm for westerners, just as the west does for people in the east. But this is not a book that comes alive and is far from the classic it could have been.