Page Eighteen

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

I read Hosseini's The Kite Runner a couple of years ago; it was a very powerful book. When I heard his new novel was released this year, I knew I had to read it. A Thousand Splendid Suns may not deliver the same "literary punch" as The Kite Runner, but it's definately a book that will give you pause. This book deals with the women of Afghanistan and what they had to endure living under Taliban rule. Reading about what these women had to endure makes me feel an overwhelming sense of appreciation for having been spared a life of such unspeakable attrocities. I feel sick to my stomach even thinking that people lived and are living with anything even close to what the two protagonists of this novel had to live with. On the other hand, I think the past several years have made Afghanistan out to be a place solely of war, death, and tyranny, but Hosseini also draws attention to the fact that it was, and can be, a lovely place.

This is a sad read, but there are many moments of triumph and beauty as well.

Page Seventeen

Smoke by Elizabeth Ruth

This books grabs you from the first paragraph where Ruth describes how Buster, the main protagonist of the story, drops a lit match while in bed and catches on fire as his parents try to save him. The book chronicles Buster's emotional recovery from the incident as he has to learn how to rejoin his small Southern Ontario community as someone phyically different. To help him, he has the support of the elderly town doctor, Dr. Gray, a man who spins yarns about the Purple Gang from the 1930s in order to keep Buster focussed on something other than his physical scars and emotional detachment. It was during these excerpts where Ruth lost me a bit, but the main plot of the story reads fairly smooth and she gives you quite the interesting revelation at the end of the book.

This book was the "One Book, One Community" read for this summer. Currently, the author is traveling around Southern Ontario and I will have the chance to chat with her next week.