Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I can't believe the rave reviews this book has gotten, both from professional reviewers and here on Amazon. I thought the plot was melodramatic, the characters cardboard, the writing overdone. I felt very, very glad I hadn't bought the book but simply borrowed it. Though the "Kite Runner" had problems, it also had some vivid descriptions of Kabul and Afghan life, which were what drew me in. I suspect most of these were autobiographical; it was in the book's second half, which was more fictionalized, that I thought the writer lost his way. Still, it was a good debut, and I thought he'd be able to correct the unevenness of the manuscript with his second effort. I was looking forward to it. No. Absolutely no. The defects of the last part of "The Kite Runner" were here in force. I could not empathize with the characters or get into their heads at all, despite being a woman. It's not impossible for a writer of one sex to successfully write about the other sex, but difficult, and I applaud Hosseini's ambition. Still, I don't think he succeeded at all here. The women were cardboard figures that could have been any generic oppressed Afghan woman -- neither ever really came to life, making it hard for me to see them as anything but political constructs. It's as if Hosseini decided he would write a story about "oppression of women under the Taliban" and allowed the theme to devour the story, much to the story's detriment. The male characters were cardboard as well, as if he'd pulled "generic oppressor" figures out of a hat. Yes, they may well exist in Afghanistan. But as fictional characters, they never came to life. Nobody is so good and so bad as all the characters here. And the triteness! The overwriting! We're hit over the head with the same image several times -- the t-shirt clad torso of one character falling down after an explosion, for example, with the same cringe-inducing reference to the t-shirt he was wearing. There were other embarrassing turns of phrase. The emotions of the characters aren't shown either; we're told that they're in agony, or whatever, but we don't see it. It's a soap opera set in Afghanistan -- very easy to read, but little of real substance. Afghan Lite, as it were. We also don't have the same vivid sense of Afghan life that we got in the first part of "Kite Runner." That's probably because Hosseini had left the country and had to rely on second-hand stories of what went on. This isn't an insurmountable problem necessarily, but he didn't manage to overcome it. Most of the descriptions of what happened were generic too. I wonder if one reason for the raves is that it seems politically incorrect to criticize a book about Afghanistan, especially Afghani women and their troubles? Or that this book gives people a sense that they're learning about Afghan life, which allows them to seem knowing about the news without actually making much mental effort, and that's why it's been so successful. In any case, a real disappointment.