The Kite Runner - Hosseini

The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini

Amir is haunted by a secret he's kept since he was a boy.  A secret about his closest friend Hassan. He will carry this secret from Afghanistan to America and back again. Will Amir be able to right the wrongs of his past? Will he have the courage to even speak of these events?

Me: Amanda this is really sad.
Amanda: It's not going to get better.

The Kite runner feels a lot bigger than it's 372 pages. Not longer, but bigger in scope than it's page length would suggest possible. Hosseini stuffs in a brief history of Afghanistan, lessons on culture, some mixed feelings on America and, oh yeah, a story about a spoiled boy who deserves the guilt he carries around for three decades.

It's easy to see why The Kite Runner remains one of the most talked about books of the last ten years. It's subject matter is sometimes shocking, sometimes illuminating and all the time difficult. My feels on the end result are mixed. I found Amir to be near impossible to tolerate. Amir is the snotty nosed kid that sat behind you in class that had all the cool toys but still threw tantrums and miraculously had cooler friends to fight his battles for him. He's hard on his father, deplorable to his friends and always brooding. By the time he gets a chance to redeem himself he can't even carry that out without bringing on more trauma to innocent bystanders.

Even with a negative impression of Amir I still found myself crying over certain chapters and reading till I was too tired to continue. I actually finished The Kite Runner in a little under a day, a feit I could not have done without my reading buddy Amanda suffering with me. I can't honestly say I enjoyed what I read but it's stuck with me for the last two weeks and left me with this haphazard review.