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A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini Publisher: Riverhead Books ISBN: 9781594489501 • Jenny Adamthwaite review A Thousand Splendid Suns follows the lives of two women born nearly twenty years apart. Mariam, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman and his housekeeper grows up in the countryside near Herat. Laila, the daughter of liberal, educated parents is brought up in Kabul.

Mariam’s life is, as her mother predicts, ‘nothing but rejection and heartache’ and a series of miserable events eventually brings her to Kabul. Laila, whose childhood is much happier than Mariam’s, is brought to her by tragic events of her own. Their lives tangle together and the women become, in many ways, each other’s saviours in a time of intense sadness and horror.

The characters are absolutely believable. By the end of the book, you know them intimately and you are as sad not to know them anymore as you are to have finished the book. Hosseini guides you first through Mariam’s early life and then through Laila’s before bringing both women, who by this time you know very well, together. As they react to each other in the early stages of their relationship you understand both points of view so well that you ache for both of them. This is an unusual and powerful way of telling a story. The usual convention for a story told from different points of view is to alternate between each character through whom the story is told. Though Hosseini does this when the characters meet, he first ensures that you understand who they are completely. Knowing Mariam and Laila and what they have been through so well makes their unity seem even stronger.

Hosseini has been criticised for describing too explicitly what the characters are feeling. Though he does directly describe their emotions, I would argue that this is a valuable approach. Though it is less forgivable in an omnipotent third person narrative, if you are writing from a character’s point of view, it is difficult (and possibly ill advised) not to describe their emotions. This, after all, is what they would do if they told you the story themselves. Furthermore, it is clearly a conscious decision of the author to take this approach: he does not describe other things in the same way. There are hundreds of little nuances throughout the book that tell you nothing and show you everything. For example, there is a lovely moment where Mariam asks her husband Rasheed what communists are and he tells her with despairing authority that they believe in ‘Karl Marxist’ and will not tell her anything further. This gives us a wonderful insight into Rasheed’s character that passes Mariam by and we begin to realise how weak he really is beneath his strength and aggression.
Hosseini’s descriptions are startlingly precise, often showing you what isn’t there as much as what is. His expert use of similes conveys both beauty and sadness to a devastating effect (‘… leaving her… to look at the frozen stars in the sky and a cloud that draped the face of the moon like wedding veil’). He has a knack for a good ending and ends each chapter like it is the last: beautiful, emotional and disarming.

My only reservation with the book is that the last section moves too quickly. In a sense, this is intentional: it switches from the past tense to the present tense and the faster pace indicates hope and moving forward. Unfortunately, the side effect of this is that it suddenly seems very hurried, as if Hosseini is trying to sum everything up, which perhaps makes it seem tidier than it needs to. Some of the events in the last section could be construed as being a bit too convenient; this may have been avoided if the pace of the book had not speeded up so much. There is also very minimal attention paid to what happens after the Taliban lose power in Afghanistan. Although there is an indication that everything isn’t perfect, there is slightly too much of a ‘happily ever after’ feel to the ending, albeit tinged with sadness and regret.

Hosseini paints Afghanistan simultaneously as a horrific, war-torn area and as the most beautiful city on Earth. He makes a clear distinction between the place and what is happening in it. As well as increasing the impact of the story, this leads to a tremendous sympathy for the people who live there, both fictional and real. I have finished both of his books with a strong and surprising urge to visit Afghanistan, which is an amazing feat for two novels that deliberately highlight the horrific things that have happened there.
© Jenny Adamthwaite   5th January 2008
j_adamthwaite at talk21.com

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