Book #77: And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

I have meant to read this book for months now. I have checked this one and The Kite Runner out from the library, actually, multiple times, and then always ended up returning it without having gotten around to it because I never could gear myself up to reading it. (Still haven't read Kite Runner--probably will now that I enjoyed this one, though!) But I did get around to it yesterday, and I was surprised by how quickly I got into it and how fast I got through it, because I could hardly put it down.

This book centers around the story of Abdullah and Pari, a big brother and little sister who mean everything to each other. Their parents make the tragic decision to sell Pari to a rich childless couple for adoption, because they are too poor to afford to warm themselves through the winter, and Abdullah spends the rest of his life longing for her and missing her--while Pari was young enough that she completely forgot that she'd had another life than the one she was adopted into. The book is made up of different stories from different perspectives, all from people who have some relationship to Abdullah's and Pari's lives, some only tangential and some very close to them. Each of the stories helps you to learn what has happened to each of them as they grow up, and to create a full picture of all of these relationships and the culture they live in. And each of the stories has something to tell you about remembering and forgetting and loving--how people deal with tragedy and loss, and what the good and bad things are about being able to remember and love things forever.

This book was so, so sad to me. I was just tortured by the parents' decision to give away Pari and how that affected Abdullah. It's just a horrible decision that no parent can imagine having to do--but it's even more horrible to realize that that is real life for some people (and another reminder of how privileged we are). And so sad to see how those decisions affected people throughout their whole lives (for good and for bad). But after so many quick and easy romances lately, it felt really good to read something with some substance and real meaning.