This is a tale of sheer injustice. I don’t even know where to begin. However, beside the strong feeling that left me with, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed in this book because the two main characters are a bit too… passive. They’ve both been through a lot of hardships and their lives have been so unfair to them (especially with Mariam) but – I don’t know, I kept waiting for them to do something to make their life better (I have no idea what, perhaps flee to Pakistan – easier said than done though, isn’t it?). It’s a story about hopelessness too, about being trapped, about having no one to turn to.

This being said, I seem to have liked Kite Runner more. Sure, Amir was a male and he didn’t have to face the war, his life was way easier there in America – the horrors he met with were no longer his horrors. But he still had his burden to bear and most of all he had choices to make. Our two heroines never actually have choices, never have a word to say in what happens to them. We could say that Kite Runner is about setting wrongs right (“There is a way to be good again”) while this book is about wrongs period. Sure, Laila’s story had a happy ending and I liked the part about rebuilding Kabul but I cannot help wondering how long will it last – old habits die hard and men used to see women as objects will keep doing so.

What I liked most: The way Hosseini knows how to describe the atmosphere of those years filled with the horrors of war. And also the horrors of the way the women were treated in that time in Afghanistan (I really could not believe my eyes, such things happening in the ’90s? Women forbidden to leave their houses without a male presence, forbidden to study, forbidden to be treated in hospitals, forbidden to… everything? I cannot even begin to imagine how hard that might be and I do applaud Hosseini for making these things known – maybe something will change, maybe some of the women in the far-off villages will get some help – do I sound too idealistic? I do realize I am).
As a favorite scene, I liked the thoughts that went through Mariam’s head when she died. Because she’s had such an incredibly hard life and nevertheless she found some reasons to be grateful about :)

What I liked least: The hopelessness. The way the two women were oppressed and no one would do a thing about it. I somehow expected from them to fight more (I do realize how hard it was for them as it was, without further complicating the matters but still…)

Recommend it? Absolutely.

A quote:

She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below.

As a reminder of how women like us suffer, she’d said. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us.

Written by the same author:
Kite Runner

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