I finished reading the second Khaled Hosseini book.
Normally I don't feel particularly emotional when I read books, but this book was different. At one point I told the HyWy that I was getting so upset by it that I didn't know whether I would be able to finish it. The story portrays the life of two women in Afghanistan during the revolution, Taliban occupation, and post Taliban. Going into it I knew that it would likely have an extremely in your face picture of the life of women in during these times. What I didn't expect was how it would affect me. At a certain point I knew the author was painting a wonderful picture of life in Kabul, the countryside, or anything else that I should appreciate but all I wanted to do was continue moving forward in the story. I found myself eventually glazing over descriptions in order to find out what happened next.
One interesting result of this was an awareness of my perception of violence. For whatever reason I enjoy movies and TV shows like CSI, The Bone Collector, etc. I have almost grown complacent to the violence in these shows. Domestic violence is an entirely different story. The descriptions of the situations, beatings, etc. were so vivid that I couldn't read through them.
Without pretending I understand what is like to be a woman reading a story like this much less a woman in a situation like these I will say that I felt like I was riding this rollercoaster with the characters. When things started to look up and there seemed to be a positive change approaching I got excited, but then when the opposite happened I felt crushed like it had happened to me. I don't recall ever feeling emotionally connected to the characters.
The scariest part in reading this story was knowing that the fanaticism continues to exist today. The fanaticism that I speak of is not exclusive to Islamic culture. I know there are fundamentalists in every religion and the means might be different, but the spirit behind it is always the same.
Normally I don't feel particularly emotional when I read books, but this book was different. At one point I told the HyWy that I was getting so upset by it that I didn't know whether I would be able to finish it. The story portrays the life of two women in Afghanistan during the revolution, Taliban occupation, and post Taliban. Going into it I knew that it would likely have an extremely in your face picture of the life of women in during these times. What I didn't expect was how it would affect me. At a certain point I knew the author was painting a wonderful picture of life in Kabul, the countryside, or anything else that I should appreciate but all I wanted to do was continue moving forward in the story. I found myself eventually glazing over descriptions in order to find out what happened next.
One interesting result of this was an awareness of my perception of violence. For whatever reason I enjoy movies and TV shows like CSI, The Bone Collector, etc. I have almost grown complacent to the violence in these shows. Domestic violence is an entirely different story. The descriptions of the situations, beatings, etc. were so vivid that I couldn't read through them.
Without pretending I understand what is like to be a woman reading a story like this much less a woman in a situation like these I will say that I felt like I was riding this rollercoaster with the characters. When things started to look up and there seemed to be a positive change approaching I got excited, but then when the opposite happened I felt crushed like it had happened to me. I don't recall ever feeling emotionally connected to the characters.
The scariest part in reading this story was knowing that the fanaticism continues to exist today. The fanaticism that I speak of is not exclusive to Islamic culture. I know there are fundamentalists in every religion and the means might be different, but the spirit behind it is always the same.
1 comment:
That was a good book. I liked his first better though. Read The Places In Between for more about how Afghans live and one journalist's journey through the land post 9/11.
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