Hosseini, too, offers us the sweep of historic upheavals narrated with the intimacy of family and village life. In his new novel, he weaves the stories of two Afghan women during several decades of cultural turmoil … What keeps this novel vivid and compelling are Hosseini's eye for the textures of daily life and his ability to portray a full range of human emotions, from the smoldering rage of an abused wife to the early flutters of maternal love when a woman discovers she is carrying a baby.
Whereas The Kite Runner focused on fathers and sons, and friendships between men, his latest novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, focuses on mothers and daughters, and friendships between women … In the opening chapters of the book the characters are so one-dimensional that they feel like cartoons … Gradually, however, Mr. Hosseini’s instinctive storytelling skills take over, mowing down the reader’s objections through sheer momentum and will. He succeeds in making the emotional reality of Mariam and Laila’s lives tangible to us … In the end it is these glimpses of daily life in Afghanistan — a country known to most Americans only through news accounts of war and terrorism — that make this novel, like The Kite Runner, so stirring, and that distract attention from its myriad flaws.
A Thousand Splendid Suns, is an ambitious work. Once again the setting is Afghanistan, but this time he has taken the last 33 years of that country’s tumultuous history of war and oppression and told it on an intimate scale, through the lives of two women … Though fascinating, the historical background — the Soviet invasion, the mujahedeen, internecine tribal warfare — isn’t always well integrated into the plot. And the transitions between Mariam’s and Laila’s perspectives can be bumpy … Hosseini succeeds in carrying readers along because he understands the power of emotion as few other popular writers do. As he did in The Kite Runner, he uses a melodramatic plot to convey vividly the many aspects of love and the ways people sacrifice themselves for those they hold dear.
The novel moves swiftly but is unwieldy, as Hosseini suddenly introduces an entirely new set of characters a quarter of the way through and needs another quarter of the way to get them fully involved in the plot. The book is powerfully moving, as was The Kite Runner, but Hosseini is not above melodrama and heartstring-tugging … The central theme of A Thousand Splendid Suns is the place of women in Afghan society … Hosseini is punctilious about providing dates for all of this, which seems a bit out of place in a work of fiction but doubtless will be useful to American readers, too few of whom know as much as the times demand about Hosseini's native land, where ‘every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief,’ yet where ‘people find a way to survive, to go on.’
Hosseini tries to go behind the burqa to describe the lives of two women in Kabul … These are obviously noble motives, but the fact that Hosseini began by thinking of his main characters as ‘other’ – to the extent of wondering ‘about their inner lives, whether they had ever had girlish dreams’ – is a huge hurdle...This is unfortunate, since the novel improves substantially, especially after Hosseini switches narrators … But if readers can hang on 90 more pages, A Thousand Splendid Suns takes a turn for the better with the introduction of Laila … Hosseini has aimed high with his second novel. In addition to telling a gripping story, he wants to convey 30 years of Afghan history and praise the endurance of the women of Kabul in the face of titanic oppression.
Like much of Kite Runner, this admirable follow-up is set in Afghanistan against the backdrop of 30 years of turbulent history … He shows us the interior lives of the anonymous women living beneath identity-diminishing burqas … But Hosseini also writes in gorgeous and stirring language of the natural beauty and colorful cultural heritage of his native Afghanistan … Cultural treasures are a tragic loss, but in A Thousand Splendid Suns, the lack of opportunities and absence of happiness are equally mourned. Hosseini tells this saddest of stories in achingly beautiful prose through stunningly heroic characters whose spirits somehow grasp the dimmest rays of hope.
… a heartfelt, well-realized character study of two women and a lament for the tortured history of the author's native Afghanistan … The marvel of A Thousand Splendid Suns – the title comes from a description of Kabul by a 17th-century Persian poet – lies in the fact that although much of the narrative unfolds in the cloistered, oppressive world of Rasheed's home, where the two women eventually join forces against his tyranny, the novel ends up as an allegory of a fractured society that has come apart at the seams … Splendid Suns achieves a kind of epic, operatic quality at the end, where the full extent of the two women's love for each other is tested and one of them rises beautifully and tragically to the challenge.
In Mariam and Laila, Hosseini has created two enormously winning female characters, women born into very different circumstances … As in The Kite Runner, there's a miniature history lesson embedded in A Thousand Splendid Suns. But Hosseini never belabors it. Nor does the book feel merely like a conveniently framed window onto a human rights issue … Hosseini may not be a lyrical writer but he marshals details well, which helps render his characters' plight — so foreign to us — in human terms … The texture of the women's journey will be familiar to those who read international news. But rendered as fiction it devastates in a new way.
Told through the alternating voices of two women, the story spans the turbulent period from the 1970s to post-9/11. The multigenerational story is set mainly in the city of Kabul … Readers will also gain a better understanding of the effects of what Hosseini calls the ‘cultural vandalism’ of the Taliban, which shattered Afghanistan's arts and culture, and the devastating impacts of Shariah law on women's lives … A Thousand Splendid Suns is the painful and, at times violent, yet ultimately hopeful story of two women's inner lives. Hosseini's bewitching narrative captures the intimate details of life in a world where it's a struggle to survive, skillfully inserting this human story into the larger backdrop of recent history.
Hosseini again illuminates the culture and struggles of the Afghan people, this time as they endure the Soviet invasion, clashing warlords and the emergence and dominance of the Taliban … A Thousand Splendid Suns is a riveting story of survival. The characters are vividly drawn, the relationships between the women are authentic and heartbreakingly believable. The descriptions of the lot of women under the Taliban are believable as well, yet at the same time unfathomable. But there is more than just sorrow and endurance in this book; there is love and hope for the future as well.
... a fine risk-taking novel about two victimized but courageous Afghan women … The heart of the novel is the gradual bonding between the girl-mother and the much older woman … The dramatic final section includes a murder and an execution. Despite all the pain and heartbreak, the novel is never depressing; Hosseini barrels through each grim development unflinchingly, seeking illumination.
