THE KITE RUNNER : REVIEW
When I first heard of the book I expected it to be 300 pages of tragedy and tragedy followed by a little more...well, tragedy.
Now I'm not saying that didn't happen, it was full of tragedy but what I wasn't expecting were the little slips of happiness and hope.
I picked up the book, braced myself for the oncoming storm of despair except what I found was something more, not necessarily good, just more
The thing is sometimes we need to come out of stories about dragons and gnomes and when that happens we are slapped hard and crisp on the our faces by the ugly truth of our own world. We don't need evil masterminds like Mojo jojo to destroy the world. We're doing a pretty good job of that ourselves. That's what we need sometimes,to open our eyes a little wider, see through the gloss and mist at the ever growing cracks in our society.This is what The Kite Runner is all about. The cracks, the creaks, the faults that we turn our backs to because they're just not as kind on the eyes.
So lets talk about the characters.
We are introduced to a variety of them from Hassan, who is the epitome of human beings to Assef who is driven by their id so much that he has forgotten what it means to be human. And then there's our dear old narrator stuck in a perpetual cycle of making mistakes and learning from them, but then aren't we all?
This is what strikes me the most about our narrator. He's so incredibly relatable that its scares you that you might have done the same thing he did ,faced with similar circumstances. And he spent his entire life in regret, haunted by his past.
Hassan, to nobody's surprise, became an instant favourite. Our narrator, Amir found the perfect word for him: 'Pure'
And nice, so nice infact that you are proud of his existence.
Ofcourse, a character like that is fated to suffer and boy, does he suffer. I cried, by the way.
Assef, the villain with the best luck in the world. This is what annoyed me about the book. The clichés. The good suffers while the bad reigns. Its true though, but its stills bugs me.
The story line is very captivating. It looses its flow at the end but on the whole its moves very smoothly. The story makes us face the plight of the people in Afghanistan and other countries which are just dismissed as 'terrorist countries' as if somehow they deserved what they got because of terrorist presence in their country. It provides us with a different outlook on things , makes us want to get off our lazy asses and do something for these people. It moves us.
We are shown a not-so-discussed-about side of rape. Sexual assault on men. We don't read about it, don't hear much about it and so assume its not worth it. This book shows you how rape mentally damages you and breaks you, no matter what gender you are, and it proves that a big part of rape, infact the most important part of it is not sex, its domination.
A phrase on the first page caught my attention "For you a thousand times over", it is used a few times through out the book but never did it mean more than on the last page, when Amir is done righting all his wrongs, when it all comes to a full circle and I don't think there's a better way to end a book.
The Kite Runner is a beautiful story about friendship, betrayal, hopelessness, regret, salvation and despair. And its worth every penny.
Now I'm not saying that didn't happen, it was full of tragedy but what I wasn't expecting were the little slips of happiness and hope.
I picked up the book, braced myself for the oncoming storm of despair except what I found was something more, not necessarily good, just more
The thing is sometimes we need to come out of stories about dragons and gnomes and when that happens we are slapped hard and crisp on the our faces by the ugly truth of our own world. We don't need evil masterminds like Mojo jojo to destroy the world. We're doing a pretty good job of that ourselves. That's what we need sometimes,to open our eyes a little wider, see through the gloss and mist at the ever growing cracks in our society.This is what The Kite Runner is all about. The cracks, the creaks, the faults that we turn our backs to because they're just not as kind on the eyes.
So lets talk about the characters.
We are introduced to a variety of them from Hassan, who is the epitome of human beings to Assef who is driven by their id so much that he has forgotten what it means to be human. And then there's our dear old narrator stuck in a perpetual cycle of making mistakes and learning from them, but then aren't we all?
This is what strikes me the most about our narrator. He's so incredibly relatable that its scares you that you might have done the same thing he did ,faced with similar circumstances. And he spent his entire life in regret, haunted by his past.
Hassan, to nobody's surprise, became an instant favourite. Our narrator, Amir found the perfect word for him: 'Pure'
And nice, so nice infact that you are proud of his existence.
Ofcourse, a character like that is fated to suffer and boy, does he suffer. I cried, by the way.
Assef, the villain with the best luck in the world. This is what annoyed me about the book. The clichés. The good suffers while the bad reigns. Its true though, but its stills bugs me.
The story line is very captivating. It looses its flow at the end but on the whole its moves very smoothly. The story makes us face the plight of the people in Afghanistan and other countries which are just dismissed as 'terrorist countries' as if somehow they deserved what they got because of terrorist presence in their country. It provides us with a different outlook on things , makes us want to get off our lazy asses and do something for these people. It moves us.
We are shown a not-so-discussed-about side of rape. Sexual assault on men. We don't read about it, don't hear much about it and so assume its not worth it. This book shows you how rape mentally damages you and breaks you, no matter what gender you are, and it proves that a big part of rape, infact the most important part of it is not sex, its domination.
A phrase on the first page caught my attention "For you a thousand times over", it is used a few times through out the book but never did it mean more than on the last page, when Amir is done righting all his wrongs, when it all comes to a full circle and I don't think there's a better way to end a book.
The Kite Runner is a beautiful story about friendship, betrayal, hopelessness, regret, salvation and despair. And its worth every penny.
