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A review by salam_
And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Re-read: 2025
No one writes like Hosseini does! Reading this book again made me confirm my bias and that he truly is my favorite author!
The way this man dissects the human condition and exposes the deepest darkest thoughts, emotions, and desires that lurk in a person’s soul. He is masterful in his craft!
I definitely appreciate this book more the second time around, the plot twist still had me gasping with surprise, and the emotional scenes still hit hard.
One thing I didn’t ponder in my first reread was the idea of seeing your parents age and wither. I am feeling it deeply now as an older adult.
This time around, I knew what to expect with its pacing. I didn’t feel as lost, but I still had the same issue. Jumping between timelines and leaving a story when I was absorbed in it to move on to a new world that I had to bring myself to get interested in.. that hindered my reading experience. But I was satisfied with the ending, unlike my younger unsure self. And thus my rating remains the same.
————————————————————
Okay, so I kinda took a lot of time reading this book, and that's how it was meant to be read, I believe. It's not the sort of book you engulf all at once, and you hardly can, with all the pain in each paragraph and all the feelings and suffering, you just NEED TO take it slow, give time for each piece of it to be contained completely by your soul.
First of all, "A Thousand Tragedies Per Square Mile" would have been a better and more suitable title for this book, though I love the current one, this indicates what the book is actually about.
I love Khaled Hosseini and I'm a fan of all his work, but this one is my least favorite, but let's start with the good things first:
- Khaled's writing style/ability noticeably improved.
- There were some very good parts of the stories of the side characters, like the twin sisters, and the girl with the brain. There was even moral meanings of every story, an approach to the psychology of human beings, the idea that bad isn't always entirely bad and the best plot twist was Nabi's discovery of the paintings!
What I didn't like was How Khaled started every story from the middle and the proceeded to explain to us what is this, I felt confused in every beginning and then later understood.
And this was primarily why my rating missed a star ^
I didn't like that there were many characters, some were essential yes, but some were just needless, and I wanted to go back to the main story and didn't care much about their story. The thing is, most of them didn't even cross-paths in a life-altering way with the main characters.
This book, like all Hosseini books do, made my heart ache, but it was worth it.
The ending:
I don't know, I simply don't know..
I did like that it was not the expected happy thing that you may say "oh duh" it will happen eventually, but I... don't know.
No one writes like Hosseini does! Reading this book again made me confirm my bias and that he truly is my favorite author!
The way this man dissects the human condition and exposes the deepest darkest thoughts, emotions, and desires that lurk in a person’s soul. He is masterful in his craft!
I definitely appreciate this book more the second time around, the plot twist still had me gasping with surprise, and the emotional scenes still hit hard.
One thing I didn’t ponder in my first reread was the idea of seeing your parents age and wither. I am feeling it deeply now as an older adult.
This time around, I knew what to expect with its pacing. I didn’t feel as lost, but I still had the same issue. Jumping between timelines and leaving a story when I was absorbed in it to move on to a new world that I had to bring myself to get interested in.. that hindered my reading experience. But I was satisfied with the ending, unlike my younger unsure self. And thus my rating remains the same.
————————————————————
Okay, so I kinda took a lot of time reading this book, and that's how it was meant to be read, I believe. It's not the sort of book you engulf all at once, and you hardly can, with all the pain in each paragraph and all the feelings and suffering, you just NEED TO take it slow, give time for each piece of it to be contained completely by your soul.
First of all, "A Thousand Tragedies Per Square Mile" would have been a better and more suitable title for this book, though I love the current one, this indicates what the book is actually about.
I love Khaled Hosseini and I'm a fan of all his work, but this one is my least favorite, but let's start with the good things first:
- Khaled's writing style/ability noticeably improved.
- There were some very good parts of the stories of the side characters, like the twin sisters, and the girl with the brain. There was even moral meanings of every story, an approach to the psychology of human beings, the idea that bad isn't always entirely bad and the best plot twist was Nabi's discovery of the paintings!
What I didn't like was How Khaled started every story from the middle and the proceeded to explain to us what is this, I felt confused in every beginning and then later understood.
And this was primarily why my rating missed a star ^
I didn't like that there were many characters, some were essential yes, but some were just needless, and I wanted to go back to the main story and didn't care much about their story. The thing is, most of them didn't even cross-paths in a life-altering way with the main characters.
This book, like all Hosseini books do, made my heart ache, but it was worth it.
The ending:
I don't know, I simply don't know..
I did like that it was not the expected happy thing that you may say "oh duh" it will happen eventually, but I... don't know.