I ,guess,I had the set the bar too high. After reading the Kite Runner and the A Thousand Splendid Suns which wrung me out like a dish cloth, I was expecting the same from And The Mountains echoed by Khaled Hosseini. The story started off well with a parable which later finds echoes in the life of the two central characters. Abdullah and his sister Pari share a filial bond, they are like two yarns interlaced. I knew from the beginning that this relationship was doomed. And what I thought reading the blurb was that it would be the quest of the brother to seek his sister. As I went deep, realised it was the story told by an array of voices spanning across time and continents. The brother ,who I deemed was the central character, comes only in the first and the last chapter. To tell the truth, I kind of drifted off after some time. I couldn’t fathom why Hosseini dedicated so many pages to some characters who had a gripping story to tell of their own,laden with secrets, but had nothing to do with the arc of the narrative. For example, when the character Baba jan was introduced, for a few pages I thought this must be the grown up brother, got a severe jolt when I realised this character was a goon who again has nothing to do with the story.
Unlike the other two books, I never got lost in this one. Nor did it leave me with a sharp, stabbing pain in my heart, which lingered on for days. I love to bask in Hosseini’s rich textured language, and I did, even in this one. This is the only thing I am going to take away from this book.
Daily Dose of Shilpi 