'And the Mountains Echoed' by Khaled Hosseini

And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini (4)

I found this to be a sad, moving, if somewhat predictable novel. As with ‘Kite Runner’, Mr. Hosseini has a beautiful voice that brings normalcy to the drama of a war torn Afghanistan. The book starts with a poor family from a small village near Kabul who undergo a sad event that divides what is left of the family. The rest of the book describes the next 60-70 years from various characters’ points of view and from a variety of time frames. My biggest complaint in the book was that some of the characters seemed a bit too peripheral to the story to be meaningful, but after our book group discussed this, I was able to appreciate the ‘echoing’ nature of each character. This also allowed the author to highlight the duality of good and bad existing in most of the characters. After some good discussion, I was able to appreciate all that Mr. Hosseini had done.