A Thousand Splendid Suns Book Review — by Samuel Ojo
This is the third of the Author’s books that I am reading, and as always, what strikes me first is the beauty attainable when an author writes about what they know. A Thousand Splendid Suns bleeds authenticity and it resonates within me, completely dissociated from his culture as I am.
Khaled Hosseini, I believe, has a gift. That gift is the ability to accurately capture human nature, at our lowest and our highest points. All the emotions in the book are relatable and visceral, even the ones that aren't so nice and that one can’t be proud of. The pain of each of his characters as they face life, the joys that they find in simple things, and the relief they find in things that they shouldn't, and the compromises that they make in the face of hard choices are all so humane that it is heart wrenching experience, going through it all with them.
We begin with Mariam, a Harami (Bastard), who inspires us to contemplate just how often in life other people pay the price for indiscretions that aren’t of their own making. We have to grapple with the unfairness of her situation, we hope with her when she’s still naive, and are stung with her when she faces rejection, we hurt with her when tragedy strikes, again and again, and ultimately become numb with her as she lives on and inevitably adapts to pain.
We also meet Laila, who’s the picture of hope and spring and all the good things that could be. Up until life happens, again. Knowing that the timeline of the book is taken right out of history makes me wonder, “just how much suffering can human beings endure?” The author excels at describing pain in all the various forms that it takes, he also illustrates hope very well, which makes disappointments that sometimes follow all the more crushing.
The final theme of the story that stood out, to me, was the nature of consequences. The fact that the decisions we make, once made, cannot be taken back, no matter how sorry we are. We don’t get to go back. And sometimes, even with the best intentions, we do not get to escape the consequences of our actions. Beautiful, poetic, heart-wrenching, A Thousand Splendid Sun’s is a 5/5 for me.
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