4 Stars for A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Housseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is set in Afghanistan from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. It is told from two perspectives. The first is Mariam, a young girl in the 1960s, given away in marriage at fourteen to a much older man named Rasheed. The second perspective is, Laila, who grows up down the street from Rasheed and Mariam. Laila, a young, educated girl from a loving family contrast Mariam’s. For example, Laila can choose her husband and continue her education.

Unfortunately, and due to tragic circumstances, Laila’s and Mariam’s background become the same, one without choice. The theme of women’s rights becomes central to the novel. While the limited choices of Mariam and Laila in Afghanistan minutely compare to my own background which consisted of unlimited educational choices while growing up in the United States; I can still relate on some level.

Being a woman who grew up in the South, where a ‘women’s work’ has often been considered those occupations that didn’t involve a formal education, like housecleaning, child rearing, and husband pleasing, this story had a certain resonation with me. Although my experiences did not consist of the hardships Mariam and Laila faced like having the H double Hockey sticks beat out of me, my experiences did involve circumstances that involve kitchen work, while the men folk watched a dang good baseball game. For the record, I love baseball too! I also love my husband and doing things to help him. Ladies, I still wash his shirts and make sure they are wrinkle free, but on the flip side he responds with things like Friday night sushi.

Despite some strong differences between my background and that of Laila and Mariam, I related these women to very real people in my own life, which is why I found the huge criticism of un-fleshed characterization to be wrong. Mariam’s initial dislike for Laila is easily understood through an older generation of women folk I know that twist the idea of ‘stand by your man’ to mean standing while being beaten, cheated upon, or otherwise disrespected through verbal abuse. Clearly Mariam should have liked Laila and hated Rasheed and a one-dimensional character would have these feelings, a more complex character would not have.

Laila’s dream to be independent reminds me less of a Cinderella stock character and more of Pocahontas. In both Laila and Mariam there is nothing one-dimensional and they are borderline three-dimensional, so I partially agree with The New York Times review describing these women as fairy tale, but it is still unfair simply because the reasons women stay in abusive relationships is never simple, or primary-colored.

Further, this is not a story necessarily about good characterization, like Hosseini’s Kite Runner it is about story, and the mystery behind how these so-called one-dimensional characters can free themselves from nasty circumstance. E.M. Forster’s Aspect of a Novel focuses on the importance of mystery to create a story worth reading. The mystery of how Laila and Mariam’s life turns out is why I kept reading and it is why I highly recommend reading it to others.