94 Followers
22 Following
leen

Books & Coffee

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.” ― Ernest Hemingway

The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini This book really surprised me, in a good way. I wasn’t really excited to read it at first, because the story is very different from other books I’ve read, but I was immediately drawn into the story. I like the first part the most, in my opinion you could also call it the “happy” part. What I found very interesting about this book, is that I didn’t particularly like the main character. Amir had a lot of flaws and wasn’t such a nice person compared to Hassan. That’s one of the things I liked most about it I think. Amir wasn’t perfect or idealized like some main characters in YA books sometimes are. It’s not like he was a hero or anything, sometimes he even seemed like a bad guy. This was of course partly because he wanted his father’s approval. What I really liked about him was that he was so human. Main characters often tend to be quite heroic, but if we, the readers, would be in their place, we probably wouldn’t make such heroic and brave decisions as they do. I got mad at Amir first, after he didn’t help Hassan. It was obviously the wrong thing to do, but then I started thinking that I maybe would have done the same thing. He must have been incredibly scared, and he was only a child. People never confess to themselves that they would make such a wrong decision, at least not until they really have to make that decision. Like it’s forbidden to even think about doing such thing, and still Khaled Hosseini put it in his book. That was one of the things I really liked, because it felt like such a real story, with real human people and real flaws.It was also an incredibly sad book, probably the saddest one I’ve read so far. I guess sad books often have a deeper message, which I see as a good thing, and the story indeed made me think more about war and poverty and all the things we often forget to think about. But in the end it just felt like too much, too much sadness, pain and grief for one story. The book literally had every sad subject in it that people write books about (war, poverty, grief, regret, cancer, suicide, …) and some of those things contributed to the story, made it better in a sad way, but some things were very unnecessary in my opinion. The best example of that I think is at the end, when you think everything will turn out right, and then Sohrab tries to kill himself. I found that very unnecessary, because he finally was smiling again and after all it turned out that he had nothing to fear. The book is also full of “what if’s”. What if Amir helped Hassan? What if Hassan and Ali hadn’t left the house? What if Amir hadn’t told Sohrab about sending him back to an orphanage for a while (which was also unnecessary) ? What if Hassan and Amir had known they were brothers earlier? What if Amir’s father would have been more loving and caring about Amir? It just all makes the story even sadder.I don’t think I will read it again, although it was a very good book. It was just too sad for me I think. I don’t like books that are extremely happy, but this was just too sad. It wasn’t one of my favourites, but I definitely recommend reading it to everyone. It’s makes you see certain things in a very different way and it opened my eyes to things I never even thought about before.