The Kite Runner by Khaled Hossein
Rating: ★★★★
The Kite Runner is a heartbreaking story manufactured to be as emotionally evocative as possible. I appreciated this elaborate design, but at the same time it felt dishonest and manufactured. I loved reading about Afghanistan in this time period, and I loved being exposed to the rich Afghan culture. I just wanted more honesty in this tale of guilt and redemption.
I appreciated the balance the author created between the first half and second half the story. I loved the original stasis of life in Afghanistan and the flight from Afghanistan to America balanced out with the return trip to Afghanistan, the rescue of the boy, and the reestablishment of stasis in America. Of course, the story was capped on both ends with kite running, as the title implies. I think the structure of this book is beautiful, and some of the passages brought me to tears, especially the relationship between the narrator and Hassan. But, again, the story lacked a certain amount of honesty. It was too balanced, too perfect. An ironic aspect, because the narrator comments on the imperfection that comes with life.
If you never read The Kite Runner in school I highly suggest you pick it up. It's not the best book you'll ever read, but it is beautiful and unique.
Favorite Quotes:
"Maybe Baba would even read one of my stories. I'd write him a hundred if I thought he'd read one. Maybe he'd call me Amir jan like Rahim Khan did. And maybe, just maybe, I would finally be pardoned for killing my mother" (56).
"'For you a thousand times over!' he said. Then he smiled his Hassan smile and disappeared around the corner. The next time I saw him smile unabashedly like that was twenty-six years later, in a faded Polaroid photograph" (67).
"One final opportunity to decide who I was going to be. I could step into the alley, stand up for Hassan-- the way he'd stood up for me all those times in the past-- and accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could run. In the end, I ran." (77)
"But no one woke up and in the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it" (86).
"Then Hassan did pick up a pomegranate. He walked toward me. He opened it and crushed it against his own forehead" (93).
"We all had our reasons for not adopting. Soraya had hers, the general his, and I had this: that perhaps something, someone, somewhere, had decided to deny me fatherhood for the things I had done. Maybe this was my punishment, and perhaps justly so. It wasn't meant to be, Khala Jamila had said. or, maybe, it was meant not to be" (188).
"but time can be a greedy-- something it steals all the details for itself" (214).
"I see now that Baba was wrong, there is a God, there always has been. I see Him here, in the eyes of the people in this corridor of desperation. This [the hospital] is the real house of God, this is where those who have lost God will find Him, not the white masjid with its bright diamond lights and towering minarets" (346).
"Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end, kamyab, nah-lam, crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis" (357).
"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night" (359).
