Pros: Well-developed and believable characters, nearly great writing
Cons: The ending is slightly weaker than the rest of the book.
The Bottom Line: A searing tale of fathers and sons, choices that haunt lives, of redemption and atonement, set against the background of a crumbling homeland and the vagaries of Afghan culture.
lyagushka's Full Review: Marc Forster and Khaled Hosseini - The Kite Runner...
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini's powerhouse debut novel, was recommended to me by a friend whose literary tastes I'd never previously had the opportunity to compare with my own. It's always reassuring to me when I find that someone I respect has standards that reasonably approximate my own. The novel is currently a bestseller, and is hailed as the first Afghan novel written in English. I liked The Kite Runner enough to read it through twice. It was a gripping read the first time around. It held my attention the second time as well, but the harrowing themes in this novel made me a little melancholic.
The Kite Runner is the story of two boys growing up in Kabul. Amir, a bookish and unathletic boy, struggles for the approval and love of his respected business-man-about-town father. Hassan is the son of their family's servant, and a member of the despised Hazara minority. The boys are close in age, and unspoken best friends despite their vastly different social status. In many ways, the boys are very different. Yet Amir's father insists that they share a kinship of sorts, for both motherless boys were nursed by the same woman. Time and history have a way of changing many things that seem eternal in childhood. As the boys grow up, Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan are crumbling around them. In The Kite Runner we see a friendship that has the power to reach across decades, continents and oceans to call in debts born in the streets of Kabul. Haunted for years by unvoiced betrayals, Amir and Hassan share a bond that neither can escape.
Hosseini has a gift for creating flawed yet sympathetic characters. I sympathized early with both boys. Amir walks in dread of his father's unspoken disappointment and impatience with him. Will his father ever forgive him for causing his mother's death at the moment he entered the world? Hassan spaniels after Amir, serves him in a reverie of devotion undaunted by Amir's occasional cruel tricks and teasing. Amir and other characters are likeable despite their ambiguous personalities, mostly because Amir narrates the novel in a tone of contrition and lack of judgment for the shortcomings of others. In the end, I think a flawed but candid character better than one that is too rosy and good for anything outside of a fairy tale. Ultimately, the main character is a believable one, which counts for a lot in my view.
Similarly, reading Hosseini's narrative is not always pleasant. There is violence in these vivid pages, and brutality. The sexist double standards of Afghan culture are on display. But there is also honor, redemption and tenderness. As I read, I was always either wondering or dreading what was going to happen next. I cared about what was happening on every page. Hosseini's writing is not fancy, nor is it completely simple. His storytelling ability, more so than his writing, held my attention and kept me turning the pages. It even brought out those all-too-rare twinned emotions while reading: enjoyment coupled by the feeling that I didn't want the book to end.
Fortunately, this isn't one of those novels which show an author's talent in the early chapters only to fall apart mid-way through the story as so many other promising novels do. True enough, there were a very few moments that did not convince in this ambitiously plotted tale. And the ending of the book seemed to wind up a little too quickly when compared with the steady pacing in the rest of the story. On the other hand, I really liked the inclusion of a few Dari words. I understood them because I studied Persian for a few semesters when I was at university. But those without any background in Iranian languages might find these references a little off-putting.
To sum up, The Kite Runner is very well written and a pleasure - though not an unalloyed pleasure - to read. But it didn't completely take my breath away as the very best novels are able to do. I would recommend this book for adults who are able to find pleasure in reading about some rather heavy themes. This isn't a book I would recommend for young teens, nor for anyone who is easily rattled by explicit violence. I'm giving The Kite Runner 4 stars, but I'd rate this 9 out of 10 if I could.
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