You may have noticed that I read. A lot. Books, blogs, newspapers, email, misspelled billboards, all of it. And most passes through my consciousness and back out again without leaving much of a footprint. But I just turned the last page of A Thousand Splendid Suns and now have the peculiar sensation of having been changed by this story, so I ran to my laptop to tell you about it.
A Thousand Splendid Suns is set in Afghanistan from the mid-1970s to the present and tells the intertwined stories of Mariam and Laila, whose paths intersect as a result of the destruction and upheaval generated by years of war. One sign of Hosseini's talent is that he has skillfully portrayed a woman's interior life and outer experience in two different female characters. Woven into the plot is 30 years of Afghanistan's history, culture, and political strife, explained more clearly than I have ever understood it before but without the didactic tone that usually ruins a historically-based novel. The story is about survival under oppression but even more, it's about the ways these women find sustenance and meaning that transcend their circumstances. It causes me to marvel at the strength of people who live through difficulties that I can't even imagine without a writer like Hosseini to help. It makes me think deeply about my limited understanding of what I do and don't need in order to live a meaningful life.
I'm still so wowed that I can't really do justice to this book in my description, so you'll just have to read it. It's at the library but I've decided (contrary to my policy about not buying fiction because I'll never read it twice) that I must own it. This is one book I can hardly wait to start reading again.
~Michelle
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