And the Mountains Echoed in Pick-a-Shelf

Apr 15, 2013 Kathy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: great-titles, favorites, historical-fiction, highly-recommend, favorite-covers, favorite-authors

I'm not sure that I can do justice to this spectacular novel immediately after finishing it, but I will try. Having read and loved Hosseini's previous two novels, I approached this new one with great expectation and, yet, equal trepidation. Could this tremendously talented author continue his streak of epic storytelling? I knew the answer to that question within the first few pages of And the Mountains Echoed. Khaled Hosseini is to writing like the artist Vermeer is to painting, using strokes of I'm not sure that I can do justice to this spectacular novel immediately after finishing it, but I will try. Having read and loved Hosseini's previous two novels, I approached this new one with great expectation and, yet, equal trepidation. Could this tremendously talented author continue his streak of epic storytelling? I knew the answer to that question within the first few pages of And the Mountains Echoed. Khaled Hosseini is to writing like the artist Vermeer is to painting, using strokes of dark and light to tell a story that stuns you with its blended brilliance. Hosseini does nothing less than spellbind me with his mastery of words, while shaping characters and setting into creations of intertwining tales that will leave you breathless.

Life is hard in Khaled Hosseini’s world of Afghanistan, hard in The Kite Runner, hard in A Thousand Splendid Suns, and hard in his latest, And the Mountains Echoed. And yet, survival and love prevail. Despair is held at bay by the resiliency of the Afghan people in these stories, those who live in the country their whole lives and those who migrate elsewhere but always keep their homeland with them. In reading these stories, there are times that you think your heart will break for the loss that the characters endure, for the deception/betrayal and cruelty that is visited upon them. And yet, there are great acts of compassion and sacrifice that keep you from giving up on the people who struggle. Not to say that there aren't tears. I am not a person easily given over to tears, but I absolutely wept at times during the reading of And the Mountains Echoed, wept for the sadness and the beauty of the people to persevere.

The novel begins with the lives of two Afghan children who, having lost their mother and living with their father and his new wife, cling to each other for nurturing, companionship, love, and joy. Needless to say, their lives encounter upheaval that interrupts this selfless bond. And so the first line of the web is thrown out with these two unsuspecting children. But rather than say more about the stories of all the amazing characters that come after this starting point, I am, instead, going to share a few quotes that are especially poignant for me, and when they are placed in the context of the story, they will be even more powerful for those who read the book.

The first quote impressed me as a statement not just about the character who is thinking these thoughts, but also as a statement about the country of Afghanistan itself. "For the first time, Adel felt truly aware of the broader movements that had always governed his life. And of the wildly conflicting truths that resided within a person. Not just in his father, or his mother, or Kabir.”

Some other quotes I found memorable are:
"People learned to live with the most unimaginable things."
“It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.”
“ ‘It’s a funny thing, Markos, but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really what guides them is what they’re afraid of. What they don’t want.’”

Of course, there are so many memorable words, phrases, and sentences from this novel that the only possible way to ensure their rightful place in memory is to make this book a reread over and over again. Thank you, Khaled Hosseini for creating and sharing this timeless gift of beauty.
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Aug 24, 2017 Tien rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, own, afghanistan

There are books you read and then immediately forget and then... there are books that stay with you Forever and this book is a 'Forever'!

The stories make your heart aches,
The endings make your heart warm,
The prose makes you want to sing from the mountaintop!

Highly recommended, guys... if this has been gathering dust on your TBR, go read it NOW! If you haven't come across this book previously, go buy it NOW! Totally well-worth the investment. ...more

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Jul 16, 2013 Nancy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, literature, contemporary

This was a spectacular book. It is so well written and the characterisation is so good, you can't put it down. Even the characters which are only loosely associated with the main plot are compelling. I can't recommend this book highly enough. ...more

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Nov 01, 2013 Rebekah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-book-club, genre-contemporary, rating-5, genre-historical-fiction, genre-novels, genre-adult, genre-adult-fiction, setting-us-california, setting-france, well-read

Perfection from start to finish

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Jun 19, 2013 Nicole rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

I have mixed feelings about this book. There were many pieces and passages that were powerful and poignant, and Hosseini does an amazing job of character development. That said, this book seemed to be playing with the idea of six degrees of separation. Each chapter was a narrative of life from a different character, each of whom is tied to the story we started with in some way. While we hear from each character we get glimpses of the main storyline, but overall this felt more like a set of short ...more

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Jul 06, 2013 Jayme Pendergraft rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, src-summer-2013

I enjoyed this a great deal more than A Thousand Splendid Suns and to be honest, I don't remember much about The Kite Runner (I really need to reread it!). I will say that I put this book down for a day or two and I really shouldn't have done that. It lost a bit of its magic in those couple of days. Overall though this is a beautifully told tale of the effect just two people can have on the generations to come. The feather image did remind me a bit of the feather in Forest Gump, which, although ...more

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Jul 09, 2013 Rachel N. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Very different from Hosseini's first two books. And the Mountains Echoed is a series of short stories about interlocking characters all of whom are some way or another connected to Abdulla and his sister Pari, who the book starts and finishes with. I really liked the main thread of story connecting Abdulla and Pari and what happens to them after Abdulla's father sells Pari to another family. Some of the side stories about characters who only very tangentially connect to the main two I didn't rea ...more

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Dec 10, 2013 Lorna rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-multicultural, fiction-historical

Hosseini is a gifted storyteller. He's very good at writing emotionally gripping accounts of family and friendship. This one isn't my favorite of the three however because it covered alot of characters in many different time periods which didn't seem to flow nicely for the reader. ...more

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