LemuriaBooks

Receiving publishers’ advanced copies of titles, definitely one of the perks to working at this fantastic bookstore called “Lemuria”, often puts me in the position of being able to actually finish and contemplate soon to be released reads a little ahead of time. Having finished A Thousand Splendid Suns a few weeks ago, I have been able to reflect on what I enjoyed and what I learned from Hosseini, the famous international author of last year’s very popular title, The Kite Runner. A native of Afghanistan, Hosseini, who now lives in California, covers approximately thirty years of recent history in his native country, ranging from the Soviet invasion, to the reign of the Taliban, to post Taliban rebuilding, all areas that I would be unlikely to study or explore, including extreme, despicable, overt female oppression. To say that I am thankful to live in the United States is for sure an understatement and a fortunate by-product of this lengthy read. However, the expert and talented way in which the author weaves this fictionalized story between two women, originally a likely dueling pair, who are a generation apart, and linked together by their husband (yes, their mutual husband) and actually become friends and co-conspirators in his murder, out of self defense, makes this novel one of the most meaningful and poignantly beautiful that I have read in some time. The ending warmed my heart and gave me hope that some day world wide violence toward women may actually lessen. Deeply moving and explicitly descriptive language concerning oppression and biases toward women cause this title to be simultaneously hard to read but yet hard to put down. A Thousand Splendid Suns may put Hosseini back at the top again. - Nan Goodman